Fantastisk artikel fra NYT om Wikileaks’ afsløringer af de uofficielle amerikanske vurderinger af det russiske samfund. Fra Putin og ned gennem olieindustrien og business-verdenen er samfundet gennemsyret af korruption og ineffektivitet og en udpræget mangel på afstand mellem det politiske system og forretningsverdenen.
In Russia, the separation between the most important businesses and government officials runs from blurry to nonexistent. The cables rendered darkly how Russian companies — often relying on what one cable called “secretive deals involving intermediary companies with unknown owners and beneficiaries” — conducted their affairs.
The cables also detailed two separate but related concerns about Russia’s oil and gas sectors: a lack of modern management and capital-improvement programs, and a tendency in Mr. Putin’s circle to see energy resources as political levers.
One prominent Western oil executive told Ambassador Beyrle that the inefficiencies “are so huge” that “a well that would take ten days to drill in Canada would take 20” in Russia.
“Multiply that by hundreds or thousands and you can start to imagine the costs to the economy,” the cable quoted the executive as saying.
The embassy’s 2009 assessment of state-owned Gazprom, Russia’s largest company, was similar. “Gazprom, it said, “must act in the interests of its political masters, even at the expense of sound economic decision-making.”
Det er, som The Economistbloggeren Schumpeter så rigtigt skriver, vist på tide at fjerne R’et i BRICs – de fire nye, økonomiske supermagter i det 21.århundrede – og betegne Rusland som det, den virkelig er: en mafiastat.
mycorporateblog by kristoffer holm pedersen 