Posted on 03/30/2018 2:20:16 PM PDT by GoldenState_Rose
Putin controls the Russia's state institutions, its secret police and its big state companies. Together with a few old friends from St. Petersburg, the president is tapping the big state companies through overpriced no-bid procurement, transfer pricing, asset stripping and stock manipulation. They are also making money by extorting old oligarchs and taking loans from state banks, not to be returned.
Overall assessments indicate a personal enrichment of Putin and his closest cronies of some $20 billion to $25 billion a year since 2006, a pilfering from Gazprom of $60 billion from 2004 to 2007...By now, this group would have accumulated $240 billion to $300 billion.
Businessman Bill Browder estimates that Putin is the richest man in the world, with a personal wealth of $200 billion. Total private Russian holdings abroad are assessed in the range of $800 billion to $1.3 trillion.
Putin and his friends have not accumulated their vast fortunes to consume them, but rather, to maintain power in Russia. The irony is that having undermined property rights in Russia, they — like other Russians — can only safeguard their savings abroad in countries that enjoy the rule of law, allow anonymous ownership and have sufficient financial depth for their vast fortunes.
In 2015, the U.S. treasury assessed that $300 billion a year was laundered in the United States. In a good year, the U.S. government detects 0.1 percent of that money. The reason? Anonymous companies are allowed to invest in this country. The same is true of Britain, where the National Crime Agency estimates that $125 billion is laundered annually. This must be stopped for the sake of national security.
Putin has himself said what sanctions hurt him most by complaining incessantly about the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Official economic data in the Soviet Union was nonsense. Just click on the video and believe your lying eyes for a change. It doesn’t show you a wealthy global economic power. Commies and Putinistas are selling this “stabbed in the back” myth because they know some people are desperate to buy it.
I don’t want to advocate for USSR but the video is shot right at the time of its collapse. And it turned to worse than that for quite some time.
You were trolling?
If you don’t want to advocate for the USSR then why did you post “In 1989 Russia was a number two global economy worth $2.5 trillion (in 1989 dollars).”?
I am just pointing at the facts to explain why no one is buying Browder’s propaganda. Do you know who Browder are?
You are confused. You wrote your post believing the fake Soviet data. By their official accounts their rubble was worth $1.50, but in the black market they had to pay 25 rubles for a dollar. By their fake data they hit peak prosperity in 1990 and the video I posted showed what a grocery store in their most wealthy region - Moscow - looked like in this peak prosperity.
I have read Bill Browder’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee and I think everyone interested in these matters should. Here is the link: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-browders-testimony-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee/534864/
Bill Browder is a relative to Earl Browder a leader of Communist Party USA. For some reason Bill became a billionaire following the Soviet collapse.
As for the rest the peak of Soviet ‘prosperity’ was around late 1970s. By 1990 it was a lot like modern day Venezuela.
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