Legal Commentary

Who fears freeing whom?

By Tom Kirkendall

In this lengthy NY Times Magazine piece from this past weekend, Andrew Meier decries the Russian government's unjust prosecution and treatment of former Yukos chairman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky:

Many can’t quite embrace an oligarch as a prisoner of conscience. He is a titan who fell from favor, some say, not a dissident physicist or a novelist arrested for a subversive manuscript. Whatever his sins, though, Khodorkovsky was not jailed for breaking the law. His courting of the Bush White House and pursuit of oil partners at home and abroad infuriated the Kremlin. But his gravest error was to challenge Putin. The reason behind his imprisonment, Khodorkovsky claims, “is well known and widely discussed. It was my constant support of opposition parties and the Kremlin’s desire to deprive them of an independent source of financing. As for the more base reason, it was the desire to seize someone else’s efficient company.”

His motives may have been mercenary, but Khodorkovsky in his cell has come to embody the fiat of the state, its arbitrary and boundless power. To date, the authorities have brought charges against 43 former Yukos employees and associates, conducted more than 100 raids .   .   .

Meanwhile, the Times and most of the rest of the mainstream media have largely ignored -- and often promoted -- similar mistreatment and persecution of business executives in our own country.

Yeah, Russian criminal justice system is corrupt, America's is far superior.

Old narratives die hard.

Full post as published by Houston's Clear Thinkers on November 24, 2009 (boomark / email).