Russia's Minister of Economic Development Alexey Ulyukaev arrives at Moscow's Basmanny Court. (c) Maksim Blinov / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.Last week, for the first time in Russia’s recent history, a federal minister was arrested. According to the Investigative Committee, Alexey Ulyukaev — at that moment, Russia’s Minister of Economic Development — was detained accepting a bribe of two million dollars at the office of state oil company Rosneft.
From the explanations given by the Investigative Committee, Ulyukaev had tried to extort money from Rosneft in exchange for issuing a positive ministerial evaluation of the state oil company’s acquisition of state-owned shares in Bashneft. In turn, Rosneft contacted law enforcement agencies, which organised the operation to detain the minister — Ulyukaev was arrested with “specific marks” on his hands after supposedly handling the money.
How realistic are these accusations? Aleksandr Shokhin, chairman of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, said it best: “You’d have to be crazy to… threaten Rosneft and demand two million dollars from Igor Ivanovich Sechin [CEO of Rosneft], who is basically one of the most influential people in our country. It wasn’t the Investigative Committee’s job to detain Alexey Ulyukaev, but representatives of the Kashchenko Psychiatric Hospital.”
