Is Fedulev so clever that, unlike most other people, he knows all the details and can exploit the system? Of course not. He is rich enough to hire the savviest lawyers who spot the loopholes. He has managed to create an oligarchic pyramid to ensure that, whatever he undertakes, all those involved are links in the chain. None can do without the others.
So Judge Balashov ruled in Fedulev’s favor in the Uralelektromash case. The judicial process followed the pattern we observed with Uralkhimmash: a highly complex case—running to many volumes of evidence that could be made sense of only by calling in experts in the subtleties of the Russian stock market—was examined by Balashov in next to no time.
After that, things took off. The exiling of a judge to Magadan was the least of it. The writ regarding the disputed Uralelektromash shares was the prologue to the bloody events at Uralkhimmash.
Another budding Balashov, the obliging Judge Ryazantsev, works in the Kachkanar Municipal Court. In late January 2000, as we have seen, the Kachkanar complex was brazenly seized by Fedulev’s armed heavies. How did the courts react? On February 1, Judge Ryazantsev found no infringement of the law in the conducting of a meeting of the board of directors under the muzzles of assault rifles. The hearing was conducted à la Balashov, at high speed, without any prehearing submission or involvement of those whose rights had been trampled. And, of course, the writ was presented the following day.
On February 15, just a fortnight later, the Judicial College for Civil Cases of the Sverdlovsk Provincial Court (i.e., Ovcharuk’s diocese) confirmed Ryazantsev’s ruling, again without a hearing. The process represented incredible speed for the Russian appeals machinery, which normally takes six months.
The mocking of Themis, goddess of justice, did not end there. On the same day, when it was clear that the provincial court was not going to overturn his earlier verdict, Judge Ryazantsev, to avoid the possibility of any further mishaps, prohibited the holding of any more meetings of shareholders of the Kachkanar OEC.
A municipal court has not the slightest right to do anything of the sort. More than that, nowhere in the Code of Civil Procedure is there provision for prohibiting acts of persons not party to a dispute.
But who among the guardians of the law in Sverdlovsk Province cares about that? Was Ryazantsev removed for acting illegally? No way. The courts rolled out their verdicts without even bothering to check whether Fedulev was the legal owner of the complex. In fact, the 19 percent of Kachkanar shares that Fedulev flourished so effectively did not actually exist. They had long ago been impounded in the course of an examination of Fedulev’s affairs in Moscow by the investigative committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In fact, the reason he had been imprisoned on fraud charges was that he had twice sold the same 19 percent to different companies.
After February 2000, people began to take notice of what was going on. The Supreme Court in Moscow tried to challenge the rampaging of the Sverdlovsk Provincial Court on more than one occasion, but nothing changed. Fedulev retained control of the Kachkanar OEC, those he had duped hid abroad, and the Kachkanar Municipal and Sverdlovsk Provincial courts enjoyed the benefit of a mass of cases ancillary to the effective recognition of the Kachkanar complex as bankrupt.
The judiciary of Sverdlovsk Province thus facilitated a succession of deals that, together, and as intended, brought about the complex’s insolvency. Such connivance, incidentally, is a criminal act, but who is going to bother looking into it? As we have seen, when Putin came to power, he made it clear that his loyalty lay with the likes of Fedulev and Rossel. On July 14, 2000, shortly after his first election, Putin flew to Yekaterinburg. He participated in the solemn laying of the foundation stone of Mill 5000 at the Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Complex, the largest enterprise of its kind in the world. The players at that complex are the same people as in Kachkanar. Fedulev has pride of place, and Mill 5000 is a major investment project of Eduard Rossel’s. The image of the president laying its foundation stone was excellent PR for Fedulev’s continuing expansion of his criminal empire. Indeed, new money followed Putin. In response to this beneficence, Fedulev and Rossel are active supporters of Putin and underwrite the functioning of the Urals section of his United Russia Party. They supported Putin in his reelection campaign in 2004.
On the surface, everything in Russia is going swimmingly and the nation is democratic. The principle of an independent judiciary has been proclaimed, and any obstruction of justice is a criminal offense. The federal law on the status of judges is progressive and supposedly safeguards their independence. The reality, however, is that these constitutional and democratic principles are violated with the utmost cynicism. Lawlessness is demonstrably more powerful than the law. The kind of justice you get depends on what class you belong to, and the upper echelons of society, the VIP level, are reserved for the Mafia and the oligarchs.
What about those who are not at the VIP level? Well, you don’t miss what you never had.
Since we are now building capitalism, there is private property. As long as there is property, there will be someone who wants to get a hold of it and someone else who does not want to part with it. What matters is the methods used in resolving the issue, the rules by which people behave. In our corrupt nation, for the time being, we live by the rules of Pashka Fedulev.
One final scene before we bring down the curtain. It is March 2003 in Yekaterinburg. Life in the province is sluggish, but for several days in a row, from March 25 to 28, a protest demonstration has been taking place. The protesters are the civil-rights activists of Sverdlovsk Province: the International Center for Human Rights, the Social Committee for the Defense of Prisoners’ Rights, and an umbrella organization called Our Union Is the Land of People’s Power. They are collecting signatures demanding the immediate retirement of Ivan Ovcharuk. They chant that Ovcharuk, with his long-standing collaboration with the crime bosses of the Urals, is the mainstay of judicial arbitrariness in the Urals and of opposition to judicial reform. They tell anyone who will listen that Ovcharuk is continuing to choke off any signs of democracy and will fight to the death against the introduction of trial by jury: he declares that it “is contrary to the interests of the inhabitants of Sverdlovsk Province.” As the protestors see it, his only real concern is to prevent any changes that might cramp the corrupt legal system he has created for the benefit of the criminal underworld of the Urals.
March 2003 again, but Moscow this time. The president has reappointed Ivan Ovcharuk as chairman of the Sverdlovsk Provincial Court.
MORE STORIES FROM THE PROVINCES
THE OLD MAN FROM IRKUTSK
The winter of Putin’s third year in office, 2002–03, was very cold. We are a northern country, of course: Siberia, bears, furs, that sort of thing. So you might expect that we would be ready for the cold weather.
Unfortunately, everything takes us by surprise, like snow falling from a roof onto your head. Because we are no more prepared for frost than for anything else, the following events came to pass.
In Irkutsk, in the depths of Siberia, an old man was found frozen to the floor of his apartment. He was past eighty, an ordinary retiree, one of the people the emergency services refuse to help because they are just too old. Their response to a telephone call is straightforward and unreflecting: “Well, what do you expect? Of course he’s feeling ill. It’s his age.” This elderly citizen lived alone, a veteran of the Second World War, who freed the world from Nazism, with medals and a state pension. He was one of those to whom President Putin sends greetings on May 9, Victory Day, wishing him happiness and good health. Our old men, our veterans unspoiled by too much attention from the state, weep over these form letters with their facsimile signature. Anyway, in January 2003, he died of hypothermia. He stuck to the floor where he fell. His name was Ivanov, the most common Russian surname. There are hundreds of thousands of Ivanovs in Russia.