Russia BBC Panorama: Kremlin demands 'Putin corruption' proof
Source: BBC
The Kremlin has called on the US Treasury to come up with proof after it told a BBC investigation it considered President Vladimir Putin to be corrupt.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the allegation was an "official accusation" and a "total fabrication".
Adam Szubin, who oversees US Treasury sanctions, told BBC Panorama that the US government had known Mr Putin was corrupt for "many, many years".
It is thought to be the first time the US has made such a direct accusation.
Washington has already imposed sanctions on Mr Putin's aides, but has stopped short of levelling corruption allegations at the president himself.
US restrictions were placed on a number of Kremlin insiders in 2014, after President Putin ordered the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine. The EU imposed similar measures against Russian companies and individuals, focusing on sectors of the Russian economy that were close to the elite.
Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35407795
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That's the problem.
Some of the info is public. It's been in the media for years, in dribs and drabs.
But I'm going to venture that some of the information would lead to some pretty severe retribution. Putin has not, in the past, suffered disloyalty lightly. Securty cameras fail, streets are closed, and a person is shot. Somebody flees, only to die under mysterious circumstances. Suddenly a court brings charges against you or your company, and the loss of revenue and the bond posted and after years the court charges and legal fees exceed your net worth, with the charges dismissed or you're found not-guilty a week after your net worth goes negative and your assets have been bought up by Friends of Putin, Inc.
In one case a new suddenly non-friend of Putin had a very good textbook publishing business. Then by executive fiat schools were ordered to use the same textbooks, whether private or public, and the textbooks had to be government approved. A month later that non-friend's business was basically dead because his textbooks, very popular, were not approved--and suddenly some regulatory fine was imposed that required money on hand that the non-friend did not have. A month after that a Friend of Putin bought up those assets for a pittance and got the contract to print the government-issued textbooks. Some of the assets bought up were the copyrights to the textbooks published by the non-friend. Soon thereafter, those textbooks were adopted by the government. The non-friend's publishing house, now owned by the Friend of Putin, published the same textbooks on the same presses, but now the Friend had a lucrative business and the non-friend was bankrupt. When the charges were dismissed the fine was eventually returned and didn't cover bankruptcy and legal costs. This was a case that stunned even Putin's supporters and caused Putin to engage in a bit of CYA.
That's the power of a corrupt big government. It's happened in business, agriculture, oil and natural gas and other commodities, large real estate holdings, travel services .... Some is Putin per se, some is just Friends of Putin.
He's widely asserted to have gotten rid of "oligarchs," which meant important non-state actors. What he's replaced them with is an oligarchy ("a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few"
. A lot of state-run companies are effectively run as private businesses by friends, and a lot of non-state-run companies are so utterly controlled by the government that Putin de facto appoints the CEO and owner and that corporation's private legal status is meaningless.
Oh wait, they're serious. 
