The Real Russia. Today. Backlash follows a pacifist speech by a Russian high schooler at the Bundestag; the Central Bank's new blacklist is causing major headaches for businesses; and entrepreneurs complain to Putin

Monday, November 20, 2017

• Backlash to a Russian high school student's speech in Germany about German soldiers at Stalingrad
• The Central Bank's “suspicious clients” blacklist has prompted a surge in business re-registrations
• Convictions in the case surrounding April's deadly shipwreck in the Sea of Okhotsk
• The scale of former anti-corruption police officer Dmitry Zakharchenko's corruption continues to grow
• Business leaders tell Putin that the federal government is strangling them with “fees” that are really new taxes
• A Russian lawmaker wants to ban “criminal subculture” propaganda
• Sputnik hires a disgraced PR chief who once insulted Navalny's “underage degenerates”

Story of the day: a high schooler dares to question Stalingrad 🇩🇪🇷🇺

Several complaints have been filed with state prosecutors, federal police, local school officials, and even the Kremlin in response to a speech delivered by a Russian high school student on a trip to Germany’s Bundestag. Nikolai Desyatnichenko, a young man from Novy Urengoy, told German lawmakers about a Wehrmacht soldier captured in the Battle of Stalingrad who later died in Soviet captivity. Some believe Desyatnichenko’s remarks were controversial because he expressed the belief that many of the German soldiers killed or captured at Stalingrad were “innocent men” who “wanted to live peacefully” and “didn’t want to fight.”

• Elena Kukushkina, a lawmaker in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, has asked local officials in Novy Urengoy to investigate Desyatnichenko’s school, warning that his comments about German soldiers at Stalingrad could be a sign that Russian educators are trying to “reexamine” the results of the Second World War. Sergey Kolyasnikov, a Yekaterinburg blogger, has appealed to federal officials, accusing Desyatnichenko of trying to “rehabilitate fascism.”
• The mayor of Novy Urengoy has defended Desyatnichenko’s speech at the Bundestag, rejecting allegations that his remarks in any way support fascism.

The banking blacklist that's causing massive headaches for Russian businesses 🤕🏦

Russian companies and individual entrepreneurs added to the Central Bank’s list of “suspicious clients” are being forced to liquidate en masse and re-register, according to the magazine RBC. Some entrepreneurs are reportedly re-registering their businesses in the names of relatives or friends, because many banks are refusing to work with companies whose founders previously appeared on the Central Bank’s blacklist. A sharp rise in re-registrations has been evident in statistics released by Russia’s Federal Tax Service since October, a few months after the Central Bank started distributing its list of suspicious clients.

• The Central Bank’s “suspicious clients” list includes the names of companies and businesspeople denied bank services due to concerns that they’ve violated Russia’s laws on money laundering and financing terrorism.
• Landing on the “suspicious clients” list effectively cuts off businesses’ access to banking services. Banks do not explain to businesses why they’ve been blacklisted, however, and companies are not warned about possible violations of money laundering laws. There is currently no way to contest being blacklisted, but financial authorities in the Russian government have prepared legislation to introduce an appeals process.
• According to the newspaper Kommersant, there were roughly 200,000 businesses and entrepreneurs on the Central Bank’s list in June. By October, the list had grown to 460,000 companies and businesspeople.

Convictions in the shipwreck that killed 69 people ⚓️

A court has convicted several individuals of culpability for the shipwreck of a trawler in the Sea of Okhotsk on April 2 that claimed the lives of 69 people. The immediate cause for the accident was that the ship became unbalanced when a large catch was raised on the port side, but investigators found that the trawler only sank due to a combination of factors. Convicted in the case were the first deputy head of “Magellan” (the company that owns the trawler), Magellan’s deputy security director, the ship’s captain, the head of the security department of the state enterprise “Sakhalinrybvod,” and an inspector for Russia’s Federal Fishery Agency.

• Figures involved at various stages in the shipwreck ignored safety precautions. The trawler’s captain, for example, permitted the crew to overload the ship. The security department head, meanwhile, knew the trawler lacked the necessary paperwork, but signed off on the sea-ready documentation.
• Sentences for those convicted range from five years and eight months to 6.5 years in prison.
• The “Far East” trawler sank in the Sea of Okhotsk on April 2. Only 63 of the 132 people on board managed to survive, due to a shortage of live-saving equipment for crew members.

Police discover a corrupt cop's ledger, and wow he stole a lot of money 👮😮

State prosecutors say they’ve uncovered a notebook maintained by the mother of former anti-corruption police colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko, where she documented roughly 8 billion rubles ($134.8 million) in illicit earnings. The ledger tracks cash in different currencies that police discovered when raiding the home of Zakharchenko’s sister. Both his mother and sister have fled Russia for Israel and Turkey, respectively.

• Police arrested Zakharchenko in September 2016 on charges of accepting $7 million in bribes. Some of the money he received was reportedly withdrawn from Nota-Bank, which lost its operating license in November 2015. In April 2017, Zakharchenko’s father was also arrested.
• In early November, the Attorney General’s Office filed a request to seize 13 apartments owned by Zakharchenko and his family. Prosecutors said that two of the 13 apartments were literally being used as cash vaults.

Dear Putin, the business community says the government is skirting your big “tax moratorium” 💸

The heads of four business associations have addressed a complaint to President Putin, saying that Russians’ tax burden has become unmanageable. In the letter, the business leaders claim that new “fees” in 2018 introduced by the government’s draft three-year plan will cost Russian entrepreneurs an extra 100 billion rubles ($1.7 billion) in 2018. The business associations argue that federal officials have imposed an array of “payments” and “fees” during a supposed tax moratorium instituted by Vladimir Putin in 2014.

• The head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs says that the government’s three-year plan is likely too far along in the State Duma to remove the new “fees,” but it is still possible, he argues, to thwart the drafting of bylaws necessary to implement the taxes.
• The third and final reading of the Russian federal government’s 2018 budget and 2019-2020 projected budgets will likely be passed on November 24. Next year’s budget plans a deficit of 1.3 trillion rubles ($21.8 billion).

You thought Russian lawmakers had run out of stuff to ban? 🤣

Russian Senator Anton Belyakov has drafted legislation that would ban the propagation of “criminal subculture.” The legislation would amend existing laws on mass media, information, and child protections. Belyakov says the reforms would target “information about the sociocultural values of the criminal world aimed at attracting individuals to criminal behavior.” The senator says such “propaganda” is no less dangerous socially than information that promotes suicide, illegal drugs, and extremism.

• Over the past several years, “Convicts’ Codexes” — or AUEs — have become popular among some Russian teenagers. Members adopt prisoners’ customs and traditions in their everyday lives.

The former cell phone PR chief who insulted Navalny's protesters just got a job at a Russian propaganda outlet 🛰

Peter Lidov, a former public relations official for Philip Morris International and the Russian mobile phone operator MegaFon, has accepted a position as corporate relations director for the Russian state-funded media outlet Sputnik. In late June Lidov lost his job at MegaFon after a series of PR snafus that culminated in a June 14 tweet, where he said the thousands of protesters who demonstrated that month against corruption were “underage degenerates.” Lidov later apologized for his word choice, but it proved to be the final straw for his employers. According to Lidov's Facebook page, his new role at Sputnik will be to “promote its brand in Russia and beyond.”