Alaco

09.06.2016 | Fleeing Russian businessmen’s persecution claims come under scrutiny

Determining whether the prosecutions they face are politically motivated can pose a considerable challenge.

Since the early 2000s there has been a steady stream of businessmen from Russia and other nominally democratic states of the former Soviet Union entering Western Europe with more than just a record of high accomplishment and the accumulation of substantial wealth behind them.  Often they are alleged to have been implicated in criminal activity back home – allegations they invariably dismiss as politically-motivated.  

Examples of high profile Russian businessmen escaping their homeland to evade prosecutions include media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky in 2000, Boris Berezovsky the following year and the dozen or so senior executives from the Yukos oil company who were spirited out of the country in 2003 to avoid the same fate as their boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky, jailed for alleged tax evasion and fraud.

All of the aforementioned faced politically-motivated charges, but represent a tiny fraction of the businesspeople that have relocated to the West to avoid misfortune back home. In many such cases, they are escaping some form of persecution. They have either fallen foul of corrupt law enforcement officials who are intent on appropriating some or all of their business; or their activities (business or political) have run contrary to those prescribed by powerful interests, thereby setting them on a collision course with the authorities. 

The former arises because in parts of Russia some domestic corporations are frequently permitted substantial latitude to pursue business corruptly with little fear of regulatory scrutiny. Although the federal or regional authorities can decide, for whatever reason, to cease turning a blind eye to past or present indiscretions. 

With the latter it is businessmen with political or media ambitions that challenge the Kremlin who are most vulnerable.  The Yukos affair, for example, began as a response to Khodorkovsky’s own political goals before developing into a wider struggle against the established oligarchic classes and a Kremlin bid to reassert control over the Russian economy. Gusinsky, for his part, was accused of using his large media empire to support the campaigns of former Mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov and then-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who had formed an anti-Kremlin alliance and positioned themselves as an alternative to Vladimir Putin in the 1999 parliamentary elections. 

For Western European authorities weighing up these individuals’ requests for citizenship or asylum and international banks and companies considering doing business with them, it can be hard to distinguish between those who can legitimately claim to have been chased out of their country, and others wanting to mask their illicit dealings.

Take the case of Kazakh billionaire Mukhtar Ablyazov.  Having fled to London in 2009 after his BTA Bank was forcibly taken over by the Kazakh State, the discovery by the authorities of a $10 billion black hole in the bank’s books led to a raft of international criminal proceedings, which Ablyazov attributed to political persecution stemming from his former involvement in the Kazakh opposition movement.  Initially granted asylum in the UK in 2011, Ablyazov fled his adopted country in 2012 at the height of a hearing of the BTA case in London, one of the largest fraud trials ever to come before the English Courts. He was sentenced in absentia to 22 months for failing to disclose his assets and lying under oath.  More recently, in October 2015, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls ordered Ablyazov’s extradition to Russia to face fraud charges.

So given the potential for misreading the facts, how is it possible to avoid falling into the trap of taking a new arrival’s questionable claims of persecution at face value? The simple answer is that those assessing these cases need to devote more energy to investigating them. It may not be possible comprehensively to prove or disprove the claims, but in Russia, in particular, enquiries can get fairly close to the truth of the matter.

While much of the Russian media is controlled or heavily influenced by the Kremlin, there are several independent national and regional publications, as well as a host of other internet resources, dedicated to uncovering corruption.  If a criminal prosecution is indeed fabricated, then there is a good chance that one of the aforementioned will challenge the official version of events. Moreover, Russia possesses many credible businessmen, politicians and civil society activists alert to rule of law abuses, and whose reading of the rights and wrongs of cases can generally be trusted. 

Cases like that of Ablyazov highlight the importance of finding out as much as possible before engaging with businessmen allegedly fleeing political persecution. Thoroughly probing their claims may be time consuming and sometimes costly but the consequences of not doing so can be of a different order of magnitude.