November 6, 2017

What is it with Russia and adoption?

Here's the short version. For the details, read William Browder's book "Red Notice."

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990's, one of the problems facing the successors to the commies was what to do with the state-owned enterprises -- everything was state-owned -- furniture industry, tractor industry, fertilizer industry -- everything. The new regime did two things:
1. Essentially gave these massive enterprises to Putin's cronies, and,
2. Advertised for investors.

Foreigners flooded into Russia looking to invest in Russian enterprises -- Browder describes this process in detail.

As time went on, a lot of Putin allies became phenomenally wealthy because they owned the former state-owned industries. These are, for the most part, the "Russian oligarchs."

Because these people were sitting on mountains of money, they looked for investments outside Russia, resulting in a flood of Russian money into the US -- much of it dirty money, stolen from enterprises or investors.

Wm. Browder and his Russian attorney, Sergei Magnivsky, discovered a massive Russian tax evasion scheme about the same time US federal attorneys started sniffing around all the Russian money pouring into the country. When Magnivsky went to Russian authorities and blew the whistle on the tax evasion scheme, he was arrested, tortured, and died in prison after one year.

Meanwhile, US attorneys in Manhattan and Jersey were busy catching, jailing and otherwise amking life difficult for Russian mobsters and oligarchs.

Browder went to the US Congress and to the Obama administration, urging them to pass legislation that would punish Russia for Magnivsky's death and continued human rights violations. It was a fight, but, finally, in 2012, the "Magnivsky Act passed. The Act hit Russia hard:
-- the Act slapped serious sanctions on Russia, making it difficult to impossible for Russia to move money into and out of the US;
-- the Act singled out several Russian oligarchs, officials, and mobsters, preventing them from entering the US, seizing their assets, and generally making their lives unpleasant.

The Putin regime went ballistic. Within weeks, Russia passed a law that:
-- prohibited adoption of Russian orphans by Americans, and,
-- placed similar restrictions on several Americans, most of them associated with the US Attorney for the Southern District of NY, which is where money laundering cases were brought against many of the sanctioned Russians.

One sidebar is this: A lot of the adoptions from Russia were done by and managed by American evangelical organizations -- the very people who helped put Trump in office. I don't know this, but, I suspect certain evangelicals may be putting pressure on the Trump junta to drop Magnivsky in exchange for opening adoptions.

Another sidebar: The US attorney who slapped the shit out of Russian mobsters and money launderers was Preet Bharara, former US Attorney for Southern District of NY -- and one of the first US attorneys fired by Trump. Bharara was one of the people named in the Russian law that banned Americans from traveling to Russia in response to the Magnivsky Act.

BOTTOM LINE: When the Russian say "we were talking about adoption," what they mean is this -- Russia wants the Magnivsky Act lifted because it is causing them serious problems. They want to start talking about lifting their restrictions on adoption of Russian orphans, hoping to use this as leverage to lift the sanctions in the Magnivsky Act. I doubt the Trump gang is smart enough to make these connections, and, I am concerned that they may lift the Magnivsky Act -- which is one of Putin's objectives