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| 15 февраля, 2013

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Keep our Roubles in our own Country

'Rossiyskaya Gazeta' publication

Experts have been reviewing the bill to ban Russian officials from holding foreign bank accounts

By Vitaley Petrov

Political consultants who took part in a round table discussion on ‘nationalisation of the elite’which took place yesterday in the Foundation for the Development of Civil Society concluded that the bill to ban local and federal officials from holding accounts in foreign banks is intended to secure national sovereignty in Russia and to encourage the emergency of a new political elite in the country.

Experts were in no doubt that the State Duma would approve of this document, not only because the proposed law enjoys broad support in Parliament, but because the people themselves are in favour of such an initiative. According to Valery Fyodorov, Director of the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre, Russian citizens perceive the current power elite as a private club which acts only in its own interests, sucking the life juices out of the country and siphoning them off for themselves. ‘Therefore any action which limits that model of behaviour is received with hurricane force support from the populace’ explained Fyodorov.

It transpired that most of the experts round the table were, in one way or another, supportive of the initiative although each had his own personal take on the bill.

The Editor-in-Chief of ‘Odnaka’ Magazine, Mikahil Leontev pointed out that the essence of this law is not fighting corruption but a question of morality. ‘There is no suggestion of introducing penalties; after all, the President has not introduced this bill as a direct attempt to fight corruption. We just need our officials to understand that by keeping their money in their own country they are protecting Russian sovereignty. The bill reminds State officials of their duty to their country’ he said.

The President of the Human Rights Council Maxim Shevchenko was even more outspoken, calling the so called off-shore, political bourgeoisie – ‘Enemies of Russia’. He expressed the hope that the law would lead to the emergence of a new political elite in Russia. ‘At present the elite in Russia has access to the country’s resources and to its power base but has no insight into the real requirements of everyday domestic policy’ he said. ‘This law could provide that insight and bring with it a different attitude to the Motherland. Political loyalty is brought about by convictions – not by the amount of money put in your pocket.’ Shevchenko went on to say that in his view, if the law works then we will soon see a whole new type of personnel in the elite who will be able to provide a firm national sovereignty foundation in the country. Shevchenko believes that this law is a major step towards the nationalization of the bourgeoisie.

Leonid Polyakov, leading political consultant and Head of the Political Consulting Department of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics a highly amusing point to raise with regard to the bill. In his words if Russian officials withdraw their accounts from European countries, then the Russian ruling elite will effectively be protecting itself from the EU who are apparently drawing up another Magnitsky List of those Russian State officials who hold off-shore bank accounts.

Polyakov believes the document reflects a well balanced assessment of the present political situation: ‘One should not stigmatize this document with revolutionary words or start hacking away at the roots of the problem. One must take a more cautious approach playing the rules of the game’ he said. ‘The people believe that the elite should be patriotic and the law should be fine-tuned enough to translate the desires of the Russian people into reality. I believe we will see the political climate change right in front of our eyes.’

On hearing the worlds ‘the people’, Sergei Dorenko, Director of the ‘Russian News Service’radio station immediately swung into action. ‘Yes and who are The People?’ he asked, clearly angered by the excessive abstraction of the whole concept. ‘Are they the golden toothed masses smiling from cheap trains?’ The President, he said, in implementing the new law should look to its success by relying not on the so-called People but on a concrete, patriotic section of the elite who are interested in running the Russian economy from within not from without.

However, Sergei Markov, Rector of the Russian Economic University disagreed and took up on Leonid Polyakov’s point, saying: ‘In presenting this bill to Parliament, the President is relying on the Russian people to demand that their public servants should be here in the country both in spirit and in body. They want the officials to be here, their money to be here, their wives to be here and their mistresses to be here.’ We must nationalise the elite and establish stable economic relations in order to get Russia’off the curb and onto the highway’ he went on. ‘Russia should take its place among the leading countries of the world’ he concluded. ‘And this is the aim of the proposed law.’