Shadow Economy and Media Control: Russians Fed Up With Putin’s Manipulations
With Russia set to vote on Sunday, SPIEGEL continues to explore the atmosphere in the country in part two of its preelection coverage. Vladimir Putin looks set to win the presidency, but residents are growing increasingly resistant to corruption and media control.
The port city on the Pacific, Moscow’s Far-Eastern outpost, 9,289 kilometers by rail from the capital, is a place of beautiful bays and short distances — to Tokyo, Beijing and Pyongyang. By contrast, it turns its back on the enormous Russian realm. The issues creating turmoil in the western part of the country are a faraway echo in Vladivostok.
Disparaging remarks about Putin, protests against election fraud? There were “many fur coats to be seen” during the demonstrations in Moscow, at least according to the rumor mill in Vladivostok, says Larissa Belobrova, 46. “Perhaps these people should try driving out of Moscow and sweeping streets or helping the babushkas, instead of spending their winter vacations in Courchevel,” she says. Belobrova, a trained actress and the governor’s wife, doesn’t wear a fur coat. Only a ring studded with diamonds reveals that she has done tolerably well for herself in the Putin era. Her annual income in 2010 was €27 million, or about twice as much, according to the tabloids, as Hollywood diva Angelina Jolie earned.
She couldn’t care less about the “crap” that’s being reported about her, says the prima donna of Vladivostok’s Gorky Theater. She has better things to do, she adds. In addition to acting, she runs, at least on paper, a business empire that includes a fishing fleet. This allows her to support her husband Sergey Darkin, the governor and most powerful man in the region, who is poor by comparison according to his tax return.
‘A Hornets’ Nest of Organized Crime’
At Putin’s pleasure, Darkin has served as governor since 2001. If popular sentiment is to be believed, he would be the first to be voted out of office if the direct election of governors were reintroduced. But despite allegations of corruption, Darkin remains in office in Vladivostok until further notice.
During the post-Soviet era, the port city has acquired a reputation throughout Russia as a bastion of the underground economy. Darkin himself laid the foundation for his rise to power with a company that officials at the Interior Ministry in Moscow characterized as a “hornets’ nest of organized crime.” At the time, his current wife was married to Igor “The Carp” Karpov, an underworld figure well known in the city. When snipers shot and killed “The Carp” in broad daylight, Belobrova agreed to marry the governor.
“What is happening in the Russian Far East is, in a grotesque way, characteristic of all of Russia,” says Vitaly Nomokonov, a law professor at the University of Vladivostok and the author of a textbook on organized crime in the Far East. “The most criminal area of all here is big business, which really ought to be clean, given its close ties to politics.”
For this reason, says Nomokonov, there is absolutely no doubt that the top brass in Moscow know perfectly well what is going on in Vladivostok, though they continue to support Darkin. Because of his past, he is susceptible to blackmail and is easily manipulated. He guarantees the “otkat,” or commission for high-ranking officials.
During the Putin era, the total amount of bribes being paid in Russia has increased from $33 billion to $400 billion. “Even President Medvedev has admitted there has been no progress,” says Professor Nomokonov. “Why is this the case? Because the people in power lack the political will.”