Rusia – Mafia State
In today's Russia human rights defenders and independent journalists are threatened, harassed and even attacked. The murder of Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006 shocked the world. Yet for every Anna, there have been many less widely known journalists killed for their work across Russia. Many of these deaths were never properly investigated.
Ordinary Russians risk arrest, or even violence from the authorities, for being involved in peaceful political demonstrations. Despite this, thousands of people still took to the streets to protest against Vladimir Putin.
In his book, Mafia State: How one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia, journalist Luke Harding writes about his own experiences as a journalist targeted by the Federal Security Bureau who broke into his home, hacked his email and monitored his phone calls. Luke Harding gives a unique, personal and compelling portrait of today’s Russia, two decades after the end of communism, that reads like a spy thriller.
Mafia State is a brilliant and haunting account of the insidious methods used by a resurgent Kremlin against its so-called “enemies” – human rights workers, western diplomats, journalists and opposition activists. A journalist expelled from Russia in February 2011 tells his story, making this a frank and chilling account of what it is like to be on the wrong side of the authorities in contemporary Russia.
In 2007 Luke Harding arrived in Moscow to take up a new job as a correspondent for the British newspaper the Guardian. Luke Harding wrote extensively on politics and corruption in Russia and the curtailment of civil liberties. He also investigated counter-terrorism and operations conducted by the Russian security forces in the Caucasus region.
Within months, mysterious agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service – the successor to the KGB – had broken into his flat. He found himself tailed by men in cheap leather jackets, bugged, and even summoned to Lefortovo, the KGB’s notorious prison. The break-in was the beginning of an extraordinary psychological war against the journalist and his family. Vladimir Putin’s spies used tactics developed by the KGB and perfected in the 1970s by the Stasi, East Germany’s sinister secret police. This clandestine campaign burst into the open in 2011 when the Kremlin expelled Harding from Moscow – the first western reporter to be deported from Russia since the days of the Cold War.
The book includes unpublished material from confidential US diplomatic cables, released last year by WikiLeaks, which describe Russia as a “virtual mafia state”. Luke Harding and award-winning Guardian journalists David Leigh have been at the centre of a unique publishing drama that involved the release of some 250,000 secret diplomatic cables and classified files from the Afghan and Iraq wars. At one point the platinum-haired hacker was hiding from the CIA in David Leigh's London house.
In 2011, shortly after reporting that leaked US diplomatic cables described Russia as a 'virtual mafia state', he became the first British journalists in 11 years to be expelled from Russia.
.........................
si inca un material cu dedicatie pentru latin loverii Rusiei, Tonta, Marga, Crin, Patriciu si desigur Ion Ilici Iliescu:
“Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a "virtual mafia state". Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus - a bleak picture of a political system in which bribery alone totals an estimated $300bn a year, and in which it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of the government and organised crime.
• Russian spies use senior mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations such as arms trafficking.
• Law enforcement agencies such as the police, spy agencies and the prosecutor's office operate a de facto protection racket for criminal networks.
• Rampant bribery acts like a parallel tax system for the personal enrichment of police, officials and the KGB's successor, the federal security service (FSB).
• Investigators looking into Russian mafia links to Spain have compiled a list of Russian prosecutors, military officers and politicians who have dealings with organised crime networks.
• Putin is accused of amassing "illicit proceeds" from his time in office, which various sources allege are hidden overseas.
• Beneath the Kremlin is a broad layer of top officials – mayors and governors – collecting money based on bribes almost like their own personal taxation system. At the next level down the FSB, interior ministry and police collect protection money from businesses, licit and illicit.
• Criminal elements enjoy a krysha [a term from the criminal/mafia world literally meaning roof or protection] that runs through the police, the federal security service, ministry of internal affairs (MVD) and the prosecutor's office, as well as throughout the Moscow city government bureaucracy. The Moscow city government's direct links to criminality have led some to call it 'dysfunctional' and to assert that the government operates more as a kleptocracy than a government."
Ordinary Russians risk arrest, or even violence from the authorities, for being involved in peaceful political demonstrations. Despite this, thousands of people still took to the streets to protest against Vladimir Putin.
In his book, Mafia State: How one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia, journalist Luke Harding writes about his own experiences as a journalist targeted by the Federal Security Bureau who broke into his home, hacked his email and monitored his phone calls. Luke Harding gives a unique, personal and compelling portrait of today’s Russia, two decades after the end of communism, that reads like a spy thriller.
Mafia State is a brilliant and haunting account of the insidious methods used by a resurgent Kremlin against its so-called “enemies” – human rights workers, western diplomats, journalists and opposition activists. A journalist expelled from Russia in February 2011 tells his story, making this a frank and chilling account of what it is like to be on the wrong side of the authorities in contemporary Russia.
In 2007 Luke Harding arrived in Moscow to take up a new job as a correspondent for the British newspaper the Guardian. Luke Harding wrote extensively on politics and corruption in Russia and the curtailment of civil liberties. He also investigated counter-terrorism and operations conducted by the Russian security forces in the Caucasus region.
Within months, mysterious agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service – the successor to the KGB – had broken into his flat. He found himself tailed by men in cheap leather jackets, bugged, and even summoned to Lefortovo, the KGB’s notorious prison. The break-in was the beginning of an extraordinary psychological war against the journalist and his family. Vladimir Putin’s spies used tactics developed by the KGB and perfected in the 1970s by the Stasi, East Germany’s sinister secret police. This clandestine campaign burst into the open in 2011 when the Kremlin expelled Harding from Moscow – the first western reporter to be deported from Russia since the days of the Cold War.
The book includes unpublished material from confidential US diplomatic cables, released last year by WikiLeaks, which describe Russia as a “virtual mafia state”. Luke Harding and award-winning Guardian journalists David Leigh have been at the centre of a unique publishing drama that involved the release of some 250,000 secret diplomatic cables and classified files from the Afghan and Iraq wars. At one point the platinum-haired hacker was hiding from the CIA in David Leigh's London house.
In 2011, shortly after reporting that leaked US diplomatic cables described Russia as a 'virtual mafia state', he became the first British journalists in 11 years to be expelled from Russia.
.........................
si inca un material cu dedicatie pentru latin loverii Rusiei, Tonta, Marga, Crin, Patriciu si desigur Ion Ilici Iliescu:
“Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a "virtual mafia state". Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus - a bleak picture of a political system in which bribery alone totals an estimated $300bn a year, and in which it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of the government and organised crime.
• Russian spies use senior mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations such as arms trafficking.
• Law enforcement agencies such as the police, spy agencies and the prosecutor's office operate a de facto protection racket for criminal networks.
• Rampant bribery acts like a parallel tax system for the personal enrichment of police, officials and the KGB's successor, the federal security service (FSB).
• Investigators looking into Russian mafia links to Spain have compiled a list of Russian prosecutors, military officers and politicians who have dealings with organised crime networks.
• Putin is accused of amassing "illicit proceeds" from his time in office, which various sources allege are hidden overseas.
• Beneath the Kremlin is a broad layer of top officials – mayors and governors – collecting money based on bribes almost like their own personal taxation system. At the next level down the FSB, interior ministry and police collect protection money from businesses, licit and illicit.
• Criminal elements enjoy a krysha [a term from the criminal/mafia world literally meaning roof or protection] that runs through the police, the federal security service, ministry of internal affairs (MVD) and the prosecutor's office, as well as throughout the Moscow city government bureaucracy. The Moscow city government's direct links to criminality have led some to call it 'dysfunctional' and to assert that the government operates more as a kleptocracy than a government."
