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Article: Rot & robbery in the East. (political corruption in Russia)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- December 22, 1997
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Perhaps it's impossible to smell corruption when one is surrounded by stench. That would explain why Russian President Boris Yeltsin waved off the travails of his troubled First Deputy Prime Minister, Anatoly Chubais. (Chubais, one of five authors of a highly problematic book on privatization, was advanced $90,000 by a publisher owned by Oneksim, a bank particularly favored in deals conducted by the Russian government.) Chubais did nothing illegal, Yeltsin declared; any question was purely one of ethics. True, compared with his other sins, pocketing unwarranted royalties was for Chubais a mere peccadillo.
Although he is presented in the Western media as a ...