Misrule of Law
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Misrule of Law How the Kremlin Uses Western Institutions to Undermine the West Misrule of Law How the Kremlin Uses Western Institutions to Undermine the West FREE RUSSIA FOUNDATION 2 019 Contents Introduction 5 Foreword 7 Part I. The Kremlin’s Attack on Rule of Law in the West 11 The Prevezon Case: Russia Learns How to Game Public Opinion in the West 12 Russian Mafia Investigation in Spain 18 Dueling “Oligarchs” Crash German Nordic Yards Deal 23 Russia and the Downing of MH17 27 The Yukos Cases 35 The Case of Guatemala 41 Russia’s Abuse of International Law Enforcement Agencies 48 Russia Digs into Opponents’ Finances 55 Part II. Active Measures: Russian Manipulation of Western Policy 59 Fifth Columns and Front Groups 60 Subversion of European Interior Ministries 72 Russian Attempts to Interfere in the 2017 Dutch Elections 82 The Wagner Group 86 The Bulgarian Connection 93 Moscow’s Man in Prague 100 Gaslighting Latvia 103 The Skripal Affair 107 About the Authors 112 Introduction By Natalia Arno, Founder and President of Free Russia Foundation This is our 15th report on the practices of the current the normal rule of law in free societies – especially from a Russian government and fittingly, our most robust study country that would never tolerate the reverse. to date. This report, given in two chapters, represents a The irony of a country that jails bloggers, people wide-ranging review of organized efforts by the Kremlin who share Facebook posts, and those who merely sched- and its insiders to use freedoms found in Western societies ule a debate on Russian leadership should not be lost on against these societies and to their own advantage even the reader. It hardly matters if these people are guilty. Fear as they crack down, sometimes violently, on those who and terror caused by the random nature of the arrests are express dissent at home. the point. Lest we forget, this is also a country that removed The Kremlin’s body of bad behavior – from election all foreign NGOs working on behalf of Russian civil soci- meddling to the annexation of Crimea to military involve- ety even as it creates its own phony NGOs to attempt ment in Ukraine – has been widely covered in the me- to influence political outcomes in the West favorable to dia and, for many, news of Russia attempting to suborn the Kremlin. I am myself a victim of this double standard, Western institutions may begin to sound like background kicked out of my own country in 2012 for the act of de- noise. But there is a systematic, often under-the-radar, at- mocracy promotion and civil society development. Since tack on the rule of law and institutions underway and it is that time, I have tried to inform policymakers and opinion no less alarming than the headlines. In the two chapters of leaders about the true aims of the Russian leadership. Ev- this report, our esteemed authors demonstrate the attacks eryone can see the obvious, but this report offers a deep- aimed at free societies, all intended to suborn Western er look into Russia’s hostile and cynical actions against the structures to the benefit of the Kremlin. West’s political and legal structures. As this report demonstrates, Russia is attacking We are witnessing centuries-old democratic princi- Western institutions in craftier and strategically discreet ples under attack; it is well past time to make a collective ways than many realize. Russia’s tactics today resemble effort to thwart Russia’s attempts to undermine what is best old Soviet agitprop rather than communications from a about the West. We have given the Kremlin ample run- normal nation-state. The attacks may appear more sub- way to show that Russia can be a good global citizen. We tle, but they are every bit as destructive: governments are share our banks, beaches and boarding schools with the influenced, laws are changed, legal decisions are under- Russian elite. Allowing the Kremlin the free space to inter- mined, law enforcement is thwarted, and military inter- fere in our institutions presents a clear and present danger vention is disguised. The fact that many of these attacks to the freedoms enjoyed in Western societies. Therefore, are either dismissed as just being part of the Russian re- we should spare no effort to expose the Kremlin’s illicit gime’s nature, or barely noticed, will encourage more to acts and aggressively fight against them at every oppor- follow. Through this report we aim to explain to policy- tunity. makers that a line needs to be drawn demonstrating that Western institutions will not be leveraged to work against 5 Foreword By Michael Weiss It has become a cliché to describe Vladimir Putin es as the principal reason why so many Russian oligarchs, as a brilliant tactician but a lousy strategist. Sure, he can intelligence operatives, and bribe-offering banks and en- wage a plausibly deniable invasion of a neighboring ergy companies have been able to thrive outside of Rus- European country, but when it comes to undermining the sia. pro-Western tilt of that country, or immunizing Russia from In these pages you’ll read about how: international censure and sanctions over that invasion, he’s decidedly less skillful. Launching a multi-pronged • a U.S. federal money-laundering case was and unprecedented attack on U.S. democracy might yield sabotaged by a Moscow attorney-turned- short-term high dividends, but Putin hasn’t got much of a Congressional-lobbyist who obstructed justice, set follow-up plan. Worse than that: he so fundamentally mis- up a dubious charity in Delaware to dismantle a understood the American political system that he didn’t landmark American human rights act — all before account for the inevitable blowback from his meddling, trying to influence a U.S. presidential race; which has put Moscow in an even worse position with re- • Russian mobsters in Spain, despite a mountain of spect to Washington than it was prior to November 2016. incriminating evidence compiled over the course Catastrophic success, it’s been argued, is Putin’s true of a decade, all went free by, among other things, modus operandi: he wins battles at the expense of wars. enlisting Spanish jurists to spread a malevolent From this follows the implicit assumption that the West ac- defamation campaign against one of the country’s tually has less to fear from his Kremlin at present than the most committed counterterrorism and organized conventional wisdom would suggest. crime magistrates; This report, originally commissioned as a tour d’hori- • the Kremlin directed effort to pass laws in the Belgian zon of Russian active measures and subversion campaigns and French parliaments that would effectively nullify throughout North America and Europe, demonstrates that the Yukos shareholder court decisions and render there is something very wrong with this assumption. While them unenforceable against the Russian Federation;1 it may be true that Putin does not think in quarter-century • a U.S.-financed anti-corruption body in Guatemala increments — he certainly doesn’t place the greater polit- become a compromised helpmeet of a Russian state- ical and economic health of Russia beyond his own pre- owned bank to railroad a Russian entrepreneur now rogatives and those of his inner circle — there is one con- caught, along with his family, in a perilous state of stant to his two-decade-long engagement with the West. exile and legal ambiguity in Latin America; He triumphs where we invite him to and most of all where we happily act as his co-conspirators. • Russia has set up a variety of environmentally- focused “NGOs,” which are actually far less This is a story of how the West consistently fails to get concerned with the overall health of the planet than its own house in order. The very institutions created after they are with furthering European dependency on World War II to keep transparent markets and liberal de- Russian oil and gas; and mocracies from corroding and collapsing are now play- grounds for Kremlin agents seeking to enrich themselves • the eccentric president of a NATO and EU member- and further that corrosion and collapse along. More than state sided against his own government in favor of anything, the pathologies of our own societies — greed, a hostile foreign one, to which he’s been financially hypocrisy, impunity — are on ample display in these pag- and politically connected for years. 1 Full disclosure: Michael Weiss was previously a senior research fellow at the Institute of Modern Russia, whose president is Pavel Khodorkovsky, the son of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky. 7 Not every attempt at subverting the West incrim- What makes combating active measures more chal- inates the West. Yevgeny Prighozin’s Wagner Group, a lenging now than it was during the Cold War is that while semi-clandestine mercenary corps now operating on mul- Russia’s tradecraft might be broadly the same (allowing tiple continents and responsible for a dangerous direct-fire for innovations in technology and communication), its exchange between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria, is an target audience is that much larger. No longer is there a entirely homegrown phenomenon. The abortive assassi- messianic mission to bring about the end of capitalism and nation of Sergei Skirpal in Salisbury was entirely the work the beginning of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Russia of two haphazard GRU operatives who were caught on today will work with anyone who can be bought. The in- CCTV and outed by an open-source digital forensic web- ternational marketplace has replaced Marxism-Leninism site.