21st Century American Women

"Putin's ...securing a monopoly position for select firms was a feature ...while deputy mayor. While he professed ...economic liberalization and private property, he ...acted to reduce competition ...and maximize profits for ...friends. In St. Petersburg, Åslund reported, "...Swedish and Finnish businessmen complained about Putin squeezing out their companies ...through ...lawless tax police, to the advantage of [friendly] companies ...""

"Putin... allegedly favored a takeover of the St. Petersburg port by the Tambov organized crime group."

"...Timchenko's company "was a beneficiary of a large export quota under a scandal-tainted oil-for-food scheme set up by Mr. Putin when he worked as head of the city administration’s foreign economic relations committee in 1991 ..." Timchenko and his colleagues were never prosecuted, and indeed he went on to establish ."

"2014... U.S. government’s sanctions... claimed a direct connection between Putin, Timchenko, and : "Timchenko’s activities in the energy sector have been directly linked to Putin. Putin has investments in Gunvor and may have access to Gunvor funds.""

"International, with Timchenko as co-owner... grew out of and benefited from the Russian state's dismantling of in 2003... gained control of... 5 percent of Russia’s total economic output and revenues of over $70 billion annually."

"After his electoral loss in 1996, Sobchak... charged... with corruption... had to flee the country... widely reported as masterminded by Putin. ...[G]etting Sobchak out... protected those, like Putin, about whom there was a lot of incriminating information. ...Sal'ye ..."Before, Putin was under Sobchak’s protection [under his roof], and now Sobchak was under Putin’s protection [krysha].""

"Sal'ye summed up the operation and Putin’s ambition... "...Cook up a legally defective contract ...take a license to the Customs Office... open the border... send the goods abroad... and put the money in your pocket. ...It was ...not put out to tender. They needed their 'partners'... of the shadow economy, criminal and mafia structures, front companies that could ensure this... . ...[H]is ...lamentations about the disappearing firms deserve nothing but contempt.""

"Putin... 1991... was made head of the supervisory council overseeing the... gambling industry in St. Petersburg. ...[H]ow did the city become a majority owner in... [that] gaming industry in St. Petersburg? ..."by relinquishing the right to collect rent for the facilities that the s occupied," the city could claim 51 percent ownership ...[E]stablishing a joint stock company called Neva Chance, which... went on to create over twenty-five different [gambling industry] companies ...many ...headed by ex-FSB officials ..."

"Baltik-Eskort operated openly as a private security service to protect Putin, Sobchak, and other[s]... It... allegedly acted as a liaison with the criminal underworld in St. Petersburg, including... Aleksandr Malyshev, reputed head of the Malyshev criminal organization, and , the reputed head of the Tambov crime organization. Some... employees were members of criminal groups and... accused of being involved in the assassinations of political figures..."

"Some... gambling companies were controlled by ex-KGB, and as such ...pushed hard to get the to submit to their authority. ...Several reputed members of the Tambov and Malyshev gangs became acquainted with Putin at this time. ...Reputed crime bosses who might not have easily received visas to Western countries now arrived as members of official cultural delegations and did their business abroad under ...protection of ...delegations."

"[T]hese sanctions represented a public admission by the United States government of what it had known for over a decade... Putin has built a system based on massive predation not seen in Russia since the Tzars. Transparency International estimates $300 billion are paid every year in corruption. , according to official Russian Central Bank figures since 2005 have been $335 billion, and ... stated that Russia now has the highest income inequality of any country in the world."

"110 billionaires control 35% of the... wealth of this very wealthy country. ...[T]he median wealth in Russia ...(50% are richer, 50% are poorer) ...is ...$871. It is the lowest median wealth figure of any country. A country that is a net exporter of energy has a lower median wealth than India. It... scores below Nigeria in its ability to control corruption, and... its willingness to control corruption."

"The Putin system nationalizes the risk and privatizes the reward to loyalists."

"The pattern we see now of the redistribution of to the inner core, has been in place since the beginning, and even before . This is not a system in which robber barons create the industrial basis of a robust emerging capitalist economy. This is a system in which barons are robbed by value-detracting state raiding elites whose sole position is determined by their relationship to the current president. Value-detraction is an extremely important part of this picture."

"Most of the academic world... have spent the last 20 years focusing on democracy in Russia... but not on authoritarianism succeeding, and the basic conclusion... in this book is that Russia is not a system under Putin, of accidental autocrats."

"It is a system that was created with a purpose by intelligent design from the very beginning of the Putin regime. ...[E]ven the 2000 election was fraudulent. Putin would not have won in the first round without massive fraud."

"[F]rom the very beginning the Putin project was... all about guaranteeing to win."

"Gleb Pavlovsky... an extremely important member of the PR team around Putin in 2000, and who has fallen out with the ... stated (and I agree...) that "Putin was part of a very extensive, but politically invisible layer of people, who after the end of the 1980s, were looking for a revanche in connection with the collapse of the Soviet Union.""

"The argument of the book is that this group failed in 1991, but they succeeded in 2000. It's the same group, ideologically, not everybody, but ideologically."

"This group was seeking also to help themselves. They were a group of trained officers, very interested in economic liberalism, but with political control, and primarily liberalism for them[selves]."

"Seeing the collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe after 1989, and the loss of the ruling status of communist parties... the [CPSU] authorized the ... to move money out of the Soviet Union, realizing that if the CPSU lost its ruling status... [i.e.,] access to the state budget without limit, they would need money to live in a . Something that the Polish, East German and Hungarian parties hadn't thought about."

"Money started to flood... in such amounts that they virtually bankrupt the Gorbachev regime first, and then when Yeltsin failed to find the Communist gold, they also significantly handicapped the ability of the Yeltsin regime to succeed."

"[T]his was CPSU money safeguarded by the , but when Yeltsin outlawed the CPSU, who did the money belong to? ...[T]o whoever knew what the bank account number was, and this started the scramble for offshore accounts. Kroll International was hired... by Gaidar and Yeltsin. They couldn't find the money."

"[T]he core of the book starts 1991... I regard it as the most conservative analysis possible, based on extensive interviews, of Putin's involvement in illicit activities in the 90s. His efforts to suppress legal cases... against him, and the rise to power of the group around him."

"What we know about this episode... It's there in the written source material. We just need to do the work of... bringing it to light. ...[T]he book is dedicated to free Russian journalism because it was Russian journalists who followed this story, first and foremost! ...[T]hey wrote this story when there was free journalism. They covered it extensively. They were on Putin's tale from the very beginning. They couldn't write this now, but they were writing it in the 1990s."

"The book contains major sections on Bank Rossiya, on the food scandel in Saint Petersburg in the early 90s, on Putin's involvement in the control and emergence of the gambling industry in Saint Petersburg, Putin's involvement as a member of the board of the St. Petersburg Real Estate Holding Company [St. Peterburg Immobilien und Beteiligungs AG]... registered in Germany... investigated by and B&D for its involvement in the laundering of money from the Cali Cartel, ...giving ...a monopoly position to the Tambov gang in the , ...creating and using... money from the mayor's contingency fund through... Twentieth Trust... and the unauthorized use of funds from the mayor's contingency fund in getting an apartment for himself in Saint Petersburg..."

"[I]t was a detailed account of the criminal activities that [Andrey Zykov] feels Putin was involved in—abuse of power... of his official position... relations with organized crime, knowledge about money laundering... a whole range of economic crimes."

"[I]nstead of seeing Russia as a democracy... failing, we need to see it as an authoritarian system... succeeding... [and] incapable of being democratic. They don’t want to be democrats. ...And if that’s correct, when did that start? And that... took me to the '90s... [T]hey were stealing from the... beginning."

"He was the linchpin. He controlled which foreign companies could register their offices and receive offices. ...[A]ll this property was Soviet property. The Soviet Union hadn't fallen yet. So how was a company... to get access to property to set up... in St. Petersburg? Putin would... assign it."

"[F]ly-by-night companies were set up. Many of his friends... still around today, were behind those companies. The goods went out, and incomplete or no shipment came back. So millions... were made just in that episode alone."

"[W]hat they saw in... [Putin] was that he had protected Sobchak. And as they said, "He didn't give up Sobchak, and he's not going to give us up.""

"They needed... situations in which, if they could postpone... elections entirely and make it more difficult for the opposition to focus on unimportant things, like the corruption of the Yeltsin family. ...So there was a real Yeltsin interest... also... a Putin interest because he wanted to be president. ...I think ...evidence that there was an FSB operation to place explosives in the apartment building in Ryazan is incontrovertible."

"[T]he system is... mutual support and tribute. It's a system. If you are on a list of possible people who might be approached to be a member of the ... you have to pay for your seat. Once you’re in... you can... charge businessmen to have line items in the budget. Same thing all across all sectors."

"[T]wo numbers is all we need. The median... wealth for the average Russian is $871, according to ... Median wealth in India, over a thousand dollars. The other number is 110... individuals own 35 percent of the wealth of Russia.... the most unequal country by far in the world."

"[Putin] doesn't back down."

"[Saint] Petersburg... was known as the "bandit's capital," and Putin was regarded by many as the link between organized crime and the mayor's office. ...[H]is activity was investigated by city and federal officials. All... squashed when he came to power."

"[A] trillion [dollars] has been subject to capital flight from Russia since 2005... primarily to Western banks."

"Russians seeking to move money to the West... can establish an LLC and purchase... [real estate] property without revealing... the actual owner..."

"Putin... believes ...[the West] can easily be manipulated through appealing to investors' and bankers' interests."

"[D]ocuments and newspaper articles that were once on Russian [websites] were scrubbed."

"I had published six books already with Cambridge."

"The and its supporters use the courts to scare off researchers who want to expose the corruption at the core of this regime."

"I also got a few reviews from people who said, "ok, so they're corrupt, but it's not a ." So... what do I mean by saying that... a political system is a kleptocracy?"

"I'm talking about a system in which risk is nationalized and reward is privatized. Only those loyal to Putin enjoy the benefits of this rule. ...It ...is not the case for many hundreds of thousands of small or medium-sized business owners in Russia who are subject to this... raiding by those above them... Property rights are secured by loyalty and not by law. They could take their claims to court, but those court decisions are political... and so the market... is hugely distorted by political considerations. There's no transparency."

"A lot is written now about the system now is 2.0. I yearn for the Politburo in trying to figure out what is going on in Russia. ...We don't know when decisions are made. There is no Alexandrov column in Pravda with... the criminological way of talking that allows... us... to understand what... direction the regime is going... There's huge lack of certainty... in the west and in the elite... about what is Putin's view on anything on any given day."

"is very important... It's a from the bottom to the absolute top... [[Loyalty|[L]oyalty]] and silence are demanded in return."

"[I]n... 89-91... the and the conservatives within the Central Committee saw what was happening in Poland, Hungary and... East Germany and became extremely frightened about the unreliability of Gorbachev to... secure their future. They worried that... the communists would have to run as one of many parties, and... be wiped out in the elections, as happened in Poland and Hungary... [T]hey started to move money abroad along established KGB channels... kept safe for the communist party in the event that it became an unfunded legally bound party... [I]nstead... after the 1991 coup the communist party was... outlawed. So... conflict and contention started amongst... KGB groups as to who had knowledge of where the money was."

"While we talked about the failure of the 1991 coup... the failure of the efforts by the conservatives to oust Gorbachev... it's a much more complex situation. ...[S]ome ...were quickly tried and put into jail, but for very short periods and very few people... even though this was a nation-wide conspiracy... 1991 failed as an incident, but the effort to return... preeminence... as a protector of the grand Russian idea... became part of the project of bringing Putin to power in 2000."

"So 91 failed but 2000 succeeded..."

"[T]his older generation of KGB generals... who were not in prison, put people in and got them prepared, and Putin was the one who rose to the top... That's my argument."