Putin’s friends are taking not just chunks of the economy for their own use, but state functions outright.
Take a look at this remarkable correspondence between RT-Invest LLC and the prosecutor’s office. (This is the company behind the Platon toll system, which collects fees from long-haul truck drivers.)
Yekaterina Petrova from Yekaterinburg filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office against Platon for violating the law on concession agreements.
The prosecutor’s office forwarded the letter to RT-Invest itself, as if it were some kind of state body. It’s like, you know, when you write a complaint to Putin and the Presidential Administration passes it on to the relevant minister.
After that, RT-Invest replies to the Prosecutor General’s Office:
“Your appeal has been reviewed... we believe the arguments set out in your appeal are based on an incorrect interpretation of the law and do not correspond to the facts.”
And it becomes immediately clear who is really in charge here. Who actually exercises oversight. Who the state really is.