Read the interview with the man who filed a lawsuit in New York against Gazprom and Lukoil over racketeering and corruption.
Judging by Peskov’s unexpected panic yesterday and Ivanov’s today, this Freidzon really is an old acquaintance of theirs and knows what he’s talking about.
– Why was Putin interested in this? – First, it was directly part of his work at the time. Second, it involved agencies with which he was closely connected then. And besides, we paid for it. We gave them money. – You mean, a bribe? – A bribe, yes... – And how was it passed on? – The money was usually taken by Vladimir Vladimirovich’s aide, Alexei Miller. And Vladimir Vladimirovich, in the manner typical of a security service officer, would simply write down the amount during the conversation. – In Igor Shadkhan’s film Power (1991), Vladimir Putin says that practically no one ever offers him bribes because nothing depends on him. Was that not true? – I never handed him money personally. But Alexei Miller handled that pleasant function quite well. Maybe he kept it for himself, of course, but for some reason I doubt it. –Was it expensive? – $10,000. Back then, that was real money. The amount depended, as far as I know, on the profit that was expected. We still had many steps ahead of us. We expected that we would be supplying the St. Petersburg police, and that it would be a long-term contract, production work at Voenmeh (the Baltic State Technical University, a defense engineering school). In other words, it was a long-term project. http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/27031833.html *
So, essentially, nothing has changed. They just put “Alexei Miller” in charge of Gazprom, where he no longer takes $10,000 at a time but billions, while Vladimir Vladimirovich still writes down the amount during the conversation.