The Magnitsky Act

The fall of the communist ideal created fertile ground for the rise of the klepto-capitalist state. The troika of the nomenklatura, the Communist Party and the Secret Police took the nation.

The nomenklatura (номенклату́ра,) a de facto elite held key administrative positions in the bureaucracy, controlling private and public powers in media, finance, trade, industry, state and all other institutions. These apparatchiks ran government, industry, agriculture and education through positions awarded by the communist party, and enforced by the Secret Police.

Russian have been taught since 1917 that capitalism is basically theft of peoples’ work product and state resources by capitalist owners; a very cynical view. With the Fall of the Soviet Union, these elite were uniquely positioned to capture the riches of the state by greatly undervaluing industries and self-dealing within their own circle, they took control and ownership over state resources, becoming instant billionaires and living the highest life possible in Moscow and other locations of the world elite. 

Soviet intelligence's apparatus was uniquely in position to gain power and money within this narrow coterie of oligarchs. Using historic Russian methods; threats, intimidation, exile and murder, they eliminated rivals and consolidated power under an obscure KGB Colonel from Leningrad. 

The first decade of Putin’s rule was a bonanza for state security. Putin’s FSB, pillaged and nearly wiped out small and medium-sized businesses, jailing their owners in the process. Government projects were dreamt up not to be built, but to allow their proponents to pocket the budgets.

Theft of billions creates problems to safely hide those billions. In Russia, Putinistas could steal it again, the same way: a raid, an extortion racket, a crooked court case, forged documents—the possibilities are endless…as are the means of eliminating the victims…

You need easily manipulated western governments with strong financial laws to protect your billions against theft by more powerful sociopaths. Within this western society you need “Useful Idiots” to help you launder the money.

As trained sociopaths Russian intelligence agents were able to identify target westerners and use common techniques of kompromat, or compromise, blackmail, intimidation, and murder; techniques of the criminal state.

As the Communist State turned Capitalist western capitalists saw the potential to make billions. But while Stanford business practices teach how to value and refinance an industry, they have nothing to say about a state that is cynically criminal and has been for a hundred years. 

When western financiers such as Bill Browder, discovered criminal activity and when it affected his bottom line he naïvely sought justice. Justice in this system is meaningless. Seeking to engage the rule of law as one would do in a modern western society based on the rule of law, he found too late that such laws cannot cool the whim of a tyrant. Browder took his case to court. He hired a lawyer, Sergey Magnitsky, who, coming of age after the fall of communism, and having believed in the vaporous idea of a lawful Russian state, took on the apparatchiks in the courts. 

The organs of power reacted swiftly to the threat. Falsely accusing him of the theft they themselves had committed, they jailed, tortured and beat him to death as a warning to others. They freely murder their opponents, the disloyal, suspected weaklings, and others,  both in Russian and around the world,  in a highly visible public way in order to instill fear and despair in all who might oppose them.

Magnitski’s client and friend Browder was outraged by his murder and worked to publicized the crime and find justice. His action led to the U.S. Congress passing the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act in 2012 by a vote of 92-4. Putin was infuriated, because it targeted his most powerful oligarchs in the only way that really hurt them: by freezing their money and their travel overseas.

The Russian elite don’t live in Russia. They live in Paris, in London, Geneva, New York, Los Angeles. That’s where their money lives, too; where their children go to school and where their families find security and top medical treatment—one of the reasons the Russian education and medical systems are falling apart, robbed by corruption of what little resources they had.

Protecting the money meant getting it out of Russia. But what’s the point of getting it out only to have it frozen by Western authorities? What’s the point if you can’t enjoy the Miami condo, the Aspen ranch or the yacht off the Côte d’Azur?… And if you can’t travel freely, among your luxurious enclaves as the western superrich do…?

The Magnitsky Act is first time that there was a roadblock to getting stolen money to safety.

And that is why you compromise a stupid and sociopathic American grifter. And why you make a deal to make him powerful enough to repeal the Magnitsky Act. And then you walk him in front of the world as a puppet.