Sometimes small but absolutely astonishing things happen.
This morning I was at the Swedish Embassy. Basically, hustling.
There was a meeting with Swedish businessmen working in Russia, and I was campaigning for Soviet power for the fight against corruption.
Sweden ranks fifth in terms of direct investment volume, and Swedish funds have enormous investments in Russia, so I was pushing my eternal theme:
-if you’ve invested a billion in Transneft, you shouldn’t be afraid to file a complaint with our own police about corruption at Transneft if such facts become known to you.
Nothing terrible will happen, and nobody is going to eat you alive for it.
People react to this kind of talk in different ways, but let me continue:
I pull into the parking lot. A guy in an old white Skoda Octavia parks next to me.
Something like this:
So we walk into the embassy together. And it turns out that the guy in the old Skoda Octavia is IKEA’s director in Russia. In other words, he runs an enormous business with billions in turnover. Their stores in Russia are visited by 200 million people every year. On the way back, realizing I was stunned by the sight of his car, he laughed and said: This is how we do business. This is the car I’m entitled to. No driver. But it does have GPS. Can you imagine a Russian businessman who, after making serious money, wouldn’t immediately buy himself a shiny new Mercedes? What’s the point of earning money and being rich at all if you can’t take a photo next to your S-Class and post it on Odnoklassniki (a Russian social network)? I was the same way myself: as soon as I had the chance, I’d immediately trade up to a more expensive car—onward to the alluring “executive class.” And when I didn’t have the chance, I’d get really upset and leaf through car magazines gloomily. Anyway, maybe it’s a small thing, but it’s impressive. And compared with all those heads of backwater municipalities who buy themselves 6 million-ruble cars with public funds—something we run into every day at RosPil (an anti-corruption project exposing abuses in public procurement)—it feels especially uncomfortable. P.S. So as not to praise the Swedes too much, I should say that I did, of course, raise the issue of their Swedish crook Torbjörn Törnqvist, one of Gunvor’s shareholders. High ethical standards in business are wonderful, but there’s still a beam in the eye too. The fact that a Swedish citizen is involved in shady and, most likely, criminal dealings with Russian oil should certainly attract the attention of the Swedish “competent authorities.” Update altapress.ru/story/66401