Maybe it was on such a drunken council that Boris Nikolaevich has decided to leave the country to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. On august 9th 1999 Putin was appointed first vice-premier of the RF government and later, after the resignation of Sergey Stepashkin’s government, he was appointed prime minister. On August 16th Putin was confirmed by the State Duma in his post of chairman of the Russia Federation’s government. It was far from a unanimous decision. 233 votes were given “for”, 84 – “against” and 17 deputies “abstained”. It is useful to remember who voted how, not to reproach the deputies and political parties, but in order to define the historical experience of mistakes. From the Yabloko fraction 18 deputies, including Gregory Alexeevich Yavlinski have voted for the confirmation, 8 Yabloko members have voted against. 52 CPRF deputies (including A. Lukyanov and A. Makashov) have voted against. Gennady Zuyganov did not vote. 32 deputies from the CPRF fraction presided by the State Duma speaker Gennady Seleznev have unfortunately voted for Putin. A part of the deputies of the leftist Popular Power fraction have voted against as well. The other parties have voted almost unanimously for Putin’s confirmation as prime minister.
It is interesting that in real fact Yeltsin had called Putin his successor on the presidential post back in August 9th and he has resigned only on December 31st. Here is what this monstrous man, Boris Yeltsin, has said in his television speech on august 9th 1999: “Now I decided to name the person who in my opinion is capable of consolidating the society and bearing on the largest political forces, gurantee the progress of reforms in Russia. He will be able to rally around him those who have the mission of renewing the great Russia in the new, XXI century. It is the secretary of the Security Council, FSB director – Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin… I have faith in him. But I want everybody who will come to the voting polls and make his choice in July to have faith in him as well. I think he has enough time for proving himself. ”
On the same day, August 9th, in a TV interview Putin said that he accepts Yeltsin’s proposition and will run as president. So when they voted on August 16th, a week later, the State Duma deputies already knew that they were confirming a person named Putin, with the biography of V. Putin on the president’s functions. And still have not blocked him. It is interesting how many of those 233 who have voted for him realize today that they have committed a mistake bordering on crime?
The mass media, at that time still not as subordinated to the Kremlin as today tried to warn society, inform it about the supposed new boss of the Kremlin. In the previous chapter we have already talked about the information that has appeared in the newspapers Versia, Stringer and others. I want to remind that the Versia newspaper, issue 31 1999 has published an article called “Reference about V. V. Putin”, in which he was quite negatively characterized. Let us return here to the scandal with the SPAG Company. After Putin became primer minister, i.e. after August 16th 1999, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has verified the SPAG Company. The company was created in 1992, when V. Putin has visited Frankfurt-on-the-Maine at the head of a delegation from Saint Petersburg’s city hall. There Putin and another delegation member Vladimir Smirnov convinced a group of Frankfurt investors to create the German company SPAG (Saint Petersburg’s real estate etc.) The company started to invest in Saint Petersburg’s real estate through branch Russian-German companies. At the same time four functionaries of Saint Petersburg’s city hall, among them Putin have entered SPAG’s “supervisory board” (as shown by the documents of Germany’s commercial registration chamber). The company was headed by the lawyer Rudolf Ritter. Saint Petersburg’s joint-stock company Znamenskaya, whose general director was A. Smirnov, became SPAG’s filial. Saint Petersburg’s city hall received two hundred SPAG actions transferred by Putin to A. Smirnov to manage. And in 1999 the BND has accused R. Ritter of laundering money for Russian criminal organizations as well as for Columbian drug dealers – The Kali cocaine cartel. In May 2000 Ritter was arrested in Liechtenstein and in summer 2001 he was charged with the mentioned accusations. Supposedly Putin formally remained SPAG’s adviser until March 2000. Western newspapers have written in detail about Putin and the SPAG Company. I will refer to the French Le Monde from June 25th 2000, the Italian La Republica from June 13th 2001, and the Newsweek from September 3rd 2001. In the Russian Kommersant information about SPAG appeared on May 16th 2003. By the way Newsweek from September 3rd 2001 affirmed that V. Kumarin-Barsukov, a criminal authority famous in Saint Petersburg was a direction member of the joint stock company Znamenskaya. The journalist Jurgen Roth from the Berliner Zeitung has received materials about SPAG. In 2003 he published the book “Gangsters from the East”. In an interview to the newspaper Sobesednik (2003, issue 33) Jurgen Roth affirmed that he has evidence of Putin’s ties with Russian organized crime – through his “adviser” Smirnov.
Stringer wrote about Putin’s ties with the criminal world in July 2001, describing the so-called “criminal organization of Tambov” and mentioning the names of Vladimir Kumarin, Ilia Trauber and others. Supposedly it is through Trauber that Putin joined Pavel Borodin’s team – who then was the RF president’s manager. To their honor, even during the first year of Putin’s presidential term the journalists were not afraid to publish compromising materials about him. The Limonka newspaper was not afraid of the power then or today, this is why we were publishing risky materials about Putin in 1999 and in 2000. I will not cite Limonka; people will say that I cite myself as evidence. I will only talk about the article “Shoulder to shoulder” (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 2002, March 13th), where the NG in its turn refers to publications in Perm’s newspapers Vechernyaya Perm and Rossiiskaya Gazeta and publishes photos where Putin is seen next to a certain Vladimir Plotnikov, a Perm businessman and the vice-president of Russia’s Judo Federation, known as “the Carpenter” and “the Director” in the region’s criminal world.
One could possibly brush aside these facts and find a certain explanation to every scandalous bloc of information about the President’s ties and actions. But there is so much of these ties and actions that a rational person even he does not want to, must believe in some evil aura of suspicious actions that surrounds V. V. Putin. Of course he is the president now, people pay more attention to him. But still. Even if only half of what he is suspected of is true, then we have a person whose place is not at the head of a State.