The award for the best way out of a difficult situation undoubtedly goes to state business executive Igor Sechin.
He really was in a difficult spot: as head of the state-owned company Rosneft, he set his own salary at $50 million a year, which comes to 5 million rubles a day.
This is one of my favorite facts about life in Putin's Russia. These days, the people I mostly talk to are investigators, FSIN staff (Russia's prison service), escort guards, and court employees. When we start arguing about politics—as we inevitably do—they of course fall back on "Crimea is ours" and "the Americans are harming us." That's when I pull out this killer argument: "Was it the Americans or Putin who authorized Sechin's salary of 5 million rubles a day?" After that, even the most upbeat pro-Putin security hardliner drops his eyes sadly and mutters something unprintable about the current authorities.
So then, how is Igor Ivanovich supposed to get out of the predicament that nobody likes the size of his salary?
An ingenious and brilliant solution has been found: this year Sechin refused to publish information about his income. And not just him personally—Rosneft as a whole will no longer tell us how much it pays its "effective managers." That's a state company for you.
Let's applaud this resourceful state entrepreneur.
I'm thinking that while I'm sitting here under arrest, I should draft a bill requiring all these figures in state companies, state corporations, Rosnano, and Rostec to publish not just the total family income, but detailed information about its sources as well. Because by this point it all looks like a joke that isn't funny anymore:
And this is the list of those who did publish. How many more are there like Sechin?
Let's submit the bill to ROI (the Russian Public Initiative platform), gather 100,000 signatures. Obviously it won't be passed into law, but at least we'll put it on the political agenda, inform the public, and make our position clear. As it is, everyone stays silent, as if this were perfectly normal.
What do you think?