STOCKHOLM ¨C Under President Vladimir Putin, cronyism has replaced Russia¡¯s once-burgeoning capitalism. If Putin lives by any motto, it is this: ¡°To my friends, anything; for my enemies, the law.¡±
In his 2000 ¡°autobiography,¡± ¡°First Person,¡± Putin reveals what ¡°counts most¡± to him. ¡°I have a lot of friends,¡± he tells an interviewer, ¡°but only a few people are really close to me. They have never gone away. They have never betrayed me, and I haven¡¯t betrayed them either.¡±
Indeed, Putin has helped his friends a great deal. According to Forbes, many of them are billionaires, even without counting what they probably have stashed away in offshore havens. For example, the leaked ¡°Panama Papers¡± last year revealed that Putin¡¯s childhood friend Sergey Roldugin ¡ª a cellist who does not even pretend to be a businessman ¡ª has received some $2 billion in state funds.
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