Oligarchs

[bjn]

U.S. billionaires mostly got rich through starting highly successful businesses.

Some got rich through inheritance of previous generations highly successful businesses.

Few got to be billionaires through criminal enterprise.

Some of that last point depends on your views of tax evasion and the lack of prosecutions for cartel and monopolistic practices...

Russia is a kleptocracy and although the capitalist system is geared towards protecting the super rich they still have to broadly follow the rules. Maybe "our" billionaires don't need to murder, extort etc in such a naked way because the system is more mature.

The Russian military procurement system seems to be corrupt from top to bottom, which goes a long way to explaining their logistical failures in the Ukraine. Western military procurement generally keeps the corruption at the top of the stack, which is why you have $16,000 dollar toilet seats on bombers and other such stories. Similarly for PPE in the UK.

ie: we can be quite corrupt, but it doesn't go all the way down and it's been legalised because finance.

[plodder]

Some of that last point depends on your views of tax evasion and the lack of prosecutions for cartel and monopolistic practices...

Russia is a kleptocracy and although the capitalist system is geared towards protecting the super rich they still have to broadly follow the rules. Maybe "our" billionaires don't need to murder, extort etc in such a naked way because the system is more mature.

The Russian military procurement system seems to be corrupt from top to bottom, which goes a long way to explaining their logistical failures in the Ukraine. Western military procurement generally keeps the corruption at the top of the stack, which is why you have $16,000 dollar toilet seats on bombers and other such stories. Similarly for PPE in the UK.

ie: we can be quite corrupt, but it doesn't go all the way down and it's been legalised because finance.

That's a good way to look at it. Our billionaires don't share their corruption therefore they represent ultimately less corrupt forces in society.

[dyqik]

You could argue that that's because they did the klepping* that made them m/billionaires a long time ago, and it's all just compressed in time in Russia.

But that's probably just the cynic in me.

[IvanV]

So, who wants to be the first to explain the difference between a US billionaire political donor and a Russian oligarch. Apart from the behavior of Putin.

I don't think there is a mahoosive difference, except for the othering vocabulary. And the fact that buying influence in a free-ish election is more respectable than buying influence in a dictatorship.

Sanctioning the oligarchs is a means of sanctioning the Russian regime. If folk wanted to sanction the US they could go after their billionaires.

In the US, being a political donor is not a compulsory activity for billionaires. You can remain a billionaire without doing it. Though many billionaires who are in business to get richer find it useful.

In Russia, you don't remain a billionaire unless you satisfy the requirements of your feudal overlord, both in terms of compliance and delivering economic value. They probably have similar feudal relationships down the value chain.

Russia is a classic extractive society. Places like the USA are not free from extractive relationships, but they are not pervasive to the same extent.

[Stranger Mouse]

Roman Abramovich sanctioned. Also Deripaska (Paul Manafort’s mate*)

But not Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia

https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/15018 ... 33345?s=21


* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... estigation

[Trinucleus]

Roman Abramovich sanctioned. Also Deripaska (Paul Manafort’s mate*)

But not Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia

https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/15018 ... 33345?s=21


* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... estigation

The Government now own Chelsea FC. Chris Grayling due to take over as manager

[Stranger Mouse]

They used the wrong f.cking photo https://twitter.com/tobyontv/status/150 ... 79747?s=21

[WFJ]

So how f.cked are Chelsea? If sanctions are still in place in August, and the club is not somehow sold, surely they cannot start next season.

[Trinucleus]

So how f.cked are Chelsea? If sanctions are still in place in August, and the club is not somehow sold, surely they cannot start next season.

I guess they would have to pay their way, so more youth team players like when they had a transfer embargo. I like the limit of £20k on away travel for the team. London is well served by rail links, and they could easily afford first class

[lpm]

They can't sign contracts with academy players. There will unfortunate 16 year olds hoping to get a renewed contract for next season but now can't.

[Stranger Mouse]

Navalny’s lot are going after Lavrov’s second family. I think they have a point

https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/150 ... 32518?s=21

[EACLucifer]

Navalny’s lot are going after Lavrov’s second family. I think they have a point

https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/150 ... 32518?s=21

No point sanctioning people like Lavrov if they can dodge it via mistresses kids, stepkids and cronies.

[lpm]

Let's not use sexist archaic words.

[Sciolus]

Navalny’s lot are going after Lavrov’s second family. I think they have a point

https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/150 ... 32518?s=21

Given they say they published that last September, I'm not sure the UK authorities are terribly keen on pursuing her.

Also I'm very happy for her to stay in London.

[Stranger Mouse]

Navalny’s lot are going after Lavrov’s second family. I think they have a point

https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/150 ... 32518?s=21

Given they say they published that last September, I'm not sure the UK authorities are terribly keen on pursuing her.

Also I'm very happy for her to stay in London.

I’m happy for her to stay in London. I’m less happy about her wealth staying In London under her or her dad’s control if it has dodgy provenance

[Sciolus]

Using people as human shields is highly unethical and I would never advocate it.

Well, hardly ever.

[Sciolus]

War is hell.

[IvanV]

They can't sign contracts with academy players. There will unfortunate 16 year olds hoping to get a renewed contract for next season but now can't.

They (Chelsea) can't even sell tickets to matches, or merchandise in their shop. They can respect tickets they have already sold. They can pay their players, so long as they have money in the bank account.

So Chelsea haven't been nationalised. But the government do seem to have created a hostage situation where either Abramovich arranges to do something they want - somewhat ironic as governments shouldn't be doing deals with individuals that they have sanctioned - or Chelsea FC goes down the tubes before very long, because they have no power to take in income or manage their business in the normal way.

I don't care for Chelsea or Abramovich. But I do care for the many normal people this action affects, the fans, the many ordinary employees, the league, in ways that seem arbitrary, unfair, and unreasonable for them to predict. It doesn't seem to look like normal sanctions. Rather it seems to be to look worryingly like government power overreaches, including interference in the operation of a football league.

You can sanction an individual due to their connection to a pariah state. But that ought to be a temporary removal of access from their assets until the issue is resolved, a cutting of the financial transfers between the individual and their asset, not an expropriation, or interference in the continuation of normal operation of those assets to the extent they are operating outside the financial flows of that individual.

As David Allen Green wrote the other day, "A government should not be able to deprive people of possessions and property by mere ministerial diktat". Even if they are a Russian oligarch subject to sanctions.

It seems to be grandstanding to distract attention from the long-running complicity the government has with kleptocratic Russians, and its limited willingness to do anything about the Londongrad Laundromat, up to now, and after now too.

[Sciolus]

I strongly disagree. Frankly, this is the sort of argument that gives us bleeding-heart liberals a bad name.

There is no dangerous precedent or slippery slope here. Abramovich is not a normal individual, and these are not normal times. This is wartime. The UK has been forced into a, ahem, special economic operation in order to defend its most fundamental and, literally, vital interests, up to and including the survival of the world itself.

If you're concerned about proportionality, this is a flea-bite to Abramovich. If you're concerned about due process, the UK is still a lawful society, and I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers grovelling over this case, and if there is the tiniest flaw or chink in the government's legal position, I'm sure they'll find it and exploit it to the max. No such proportionality or due process for the Russian squaddies being killed by British arms, which everyone supports.

As for Chelsea, they're reaping what they sowed. They chose to get into bed with a psychopathic warmongering regime. I just hope Newcastle get the same treatment (I doubt it though, that psychopathic warmongering regime buys its weapons from us).

As for the fans and ordinary employees, well, wa-- I mean Спецоперация has its casualties. I haven't seen much weeping for the Aeroflot crews or Moscow burger-flippers made abruptly redundant just as the economy disintegrates around them.

I agree with your point about distraction from the laundromat though.

[IvanV]

I strongly disagree. Frankly, this is the sort of argument that gives us bleeding-heart liberals a bad name.

There is no dangerous precedent or slippery slope here. Abramovich is not a normal individual, and these are not normal times. This is wartime. The UK has been forced into a, ahem, special economic operation in order to defend its most fundamental and, literally, vital interests, up to and including the survival of the world itself.

Let me test that, to see if I can agree with you.

Suppose Abramovich owned not a major British football club, but a major British supermarket, or a major British energy supplier, a British airline, or a British steel manufacturer. What would happen to them if suddenly they couldn't take any new money from customers, or conclude any contracts - only deliver what is already paid for and pay employees and suppliers from their present funds? In fact, if an energy supplier was forced down like that, the taxpayer would be hugely out of pocket, just as it is in the case of Bulb going down - it would be a very stupid thing to do. And the energy traders who had sold that supplier hedges it couldn't claim on would be laughing all the way to the bank. Those other businesses would also be destroyed very rapidly by such restrictions. It may even not be possible for the supermarket buildings, for example, to be transfered and occupied by an alternative supermarket, so creating large amounts of empty shop property at the same time as a shortage of retail capacity. Smaller towns where that was the main supermarket could potentially be seriously stuffed.

Just because those businesses are kind of "more useful" than a football club, it doesn't seem to me to merit a different treatment. That's the economist in me coming out I suppose.

I don't agree that preventing a Russian airline from flying to Britain is at all the same thing as preventing a British airline, owned by a Russian individual investor, from taking any money from its customers to fly between London and Edinburgh.

It is entirely possible to sanction an owner of an operational company without interfering in the normal continued operation of that company. I tend to suspect that Abramovich found an optically satisfactory way around the financial fair play rules, as the Manchester City case seemed to demonstrate that is possible. So the fact of sanctioning Abramovich in the normal way might well have prevented Chelsea from sucking on the Abramovich teat, and forced to operate within its own income.

[Sciolus]

You appear to have withdrawn from a principled objection to a pragmatic one. We are already being pragmatic. Sanctions decisions are being taken on a case-by-case basis, which is why we are still giving money to Gazprom. The fact that Chelsea is of low strategic value to the UK is why it's totally fine to act against it as a measure against Putin's allies. Your other hypotheticals would be dealt with in the same case-by-case way.

[Millennie Al]

There is no dangerous precedent or slippery slope here. Abramovich is not a normal individual, and these are not normal times. This is wartime. The UK has been forced into a, ahem, special economic operation in order to defend its most fundamental and, literally, vital interests, up to and including the survival of the world itself.

We are not at war.

If you're concerned about proportionality, this is a flea-bite to Abramovich. If you're concerned about due process, the UK is still a lawful society, and I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers grovelling over this case, and if there is the tiniest flaw or chink in the government's legal position, I'm sure they'll find it and exploit it to the max. No such proportionality or due process for the Russian squaddies being killed by British arms, which everyone supports.

Do you similarly support internment without trial? If Abramovich is subject to santions, as an individual rather than a state he is entitled to a trial. Furthermore, except to the extent that there is serious risk of him evading any judgement of such a trial, he should be free to go about his business. In criminal trials, we allow the defendant to be out on bail unless there are good reasons not to. In civil cases, we only freeze assets if there is a risk of them being taken out of the jursidiction or otherwise disposed of in a manner which might frustrate judgement. Since a football club cannot be moved, the only reasonable restriction that could be imposed (on the assumption that a trial might result in seizure of the club) is that Abramovich be prevented from selling it. I can see no reasonable justification for preventing it from trading as normal.

We used to have attainder, but it is generally nowadays considered to be unjust.

[Stranger Mouse]

Protestors occupying Oleg Deripaska’s house. The look on the guy’s face when his throw goes wrong!

https://twitter.com/gregbarradale/statu ... 70339?s=21

[lpm]

That's a grim trench to spend the war in. Poor bastards.

[Stranger Mouse]

That's a grim trench to spend the war in. Poor bastards.

Apparently their message is “f.ck off” https://twitter.com/lbc/status/1503325464886190093?s=21