One Clever Russian, But In New York

Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, New York

20 February 2001

The New York Times managed an interview with Pavel Borodin in his exclusive New York quarters at the weekend. Mr Borodin, ex-Kremlin chief, and still secretary of the Commission to unify Belarus and Russia, is accommodated in the National Security wing of the US Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, arrested on his way to President Bush's inauguration on a extradition warrant from the Swiss authorities. He is accused of squirreling away bribes from Kremlin renovation contracts in Swiss bank accounts.

Pavel Borodin seems exceptionally phlegmatic in his confinement, saying to his interviewer (lawyer present, of course): ''We have a saying in Russian: 'Some people get nothing in life, some people get everything'. I've had everything: poverty, hardship, the Kremlin and now the Brooklyn prison.''

Pavel Borodin is gracious about the agents who arrested him: ''They spoke wonderful Russian,'' he says, 'They said the U.S. Justice Department had no issue with me, but that there was a treaty between the Swiss and the U.S. and they had a detention order for me from the Swiss.''

In fact, as the only inmate in the security wing, he says he is very well treated, and ''I have a view of the Statue of Liberty from my window. It's very symbolic.''

Symbolic indeed. Russians are often impressive in adversity, after their long and terrible history, and are a good illustration of another (English) saying: 'What can't be cured, must be endured'. But there is a big danger that poor (or is it, rich?) Mr Borodin is about to become a symbol himself, and history has not been kind to symbols.

Symbol he is, first, of Switzerland's battle against the EU's Fiscal Tendency, which would like to beat its way through Switzerland's banking secrecy laws. The Swiss are resisting, and must necessarily fix on any actual evidence of their ability to nail criminal misuse of the banking system. Whatever the reason they began this investigation, the very last thing they can now do is to stop it.

Symbol he is, second, of President Putin's fight against corruption in Russia, or anyway, his declared determination to fight against it. Corruption is too endemic in Russia to be rooted out by six Mr Putins; but try he must, and be seen to be trying. Pavel Borodin says Swiss prosecutors are unwitting accomplices in a political conspiracy against him. The 'unwitting' is open to question, but there can't be much doubt that his sacrifice on the altar of Russian respectability is even more potent than the Swiss equivalent.

Symbol he is, lastly, of American justice, as he wryly observed through his window. Justice is blind, seeing only the law; but at the top table, where Mr Borodin dined, the law is more often the plaything of politicians than their master.

''I would never have gone outside Russia if I thought I was guilty of anything,'' said the inscrutable Mr. Borodin during the interview. ''If I weren't sure of my innocence, why would I have come to the U.S.? I would have gone to Finland or something.'' That may be a disingenuous remark, and he must at least wish that he had followed Vladimir Gusinsky to Gibraltar. Will he ever get the chance?

.

Recommended

Write a comment