The FT published a truly astounding, nay, embarrassing, article yesterday co-authored by Catherine Belton and Neil Buckley about bankrupted former oligarch Sergei Pugachev's legal battle with Russian prosecutors over the financial implosion of his business empire in 2012.
(The article is sometimes behind a paywall or login, so we have presented it in full at the end of this article - editors)
It betrays a stunning ignorance of the facts of the case, facts which are common knowledge to the financial community in Moscow.
In the 27 paragraph article, 17 of them were effectively a soapbox for Pugachev, with most of the rest drawing one false inference after another.
Only in the 15th paragraph does the article mention that the government charged Pugachev with massive and brazen fraud at the time, euphemizing it to the point where it seems trivial. It never mentions that Mr. Pugachev presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy in Russian history. That slim paragraph, and another minor mention, buried at the end of the article (paragraph #22), is the only space the FT gives to the other side of the story.
The FT grossly distorts the issue, painting Pugachev as another persecuted oligarch worthy of pity, when in fact, he is widely seen by most financial experts in Moscow, foreign and domestic, to be a died-in-the-wool fraudster, the Russian Bernie Madoff.
The intellectual bankruptcy of The Financial Times is truly breathtaking - not just Khodorkovsky but now any criminal who claims to be a dissident receives accolades from this venerable broadsheet.
Complete story at - Russian news: Financial Times Whitewashes Notorious Russian Fraudster - Russia Insider
(The article is sometimes behind a paywall or login, so we have presented it in full at the end of this article - editors)
It betrays a stunning ignorance of the facts of the case, facts which are common knowledge to the financial community in Moscow.
In the 27 paragraph article, 17 of them were effectively a soapbox for Pugachev, with most of the rest drawing one false inference after another.
Only in the 15th paragraph does the article mention that the government charged Pugachev with massive and brazen fraud at the time, euphemizing it to the point where it seems trivial. It never mentions that Mr. Pugachev presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy in Russian history. That slim paragraph, and another minor mention, buried at the end of the article (paragraph #22), is the only space the FT gives to the other side of the story.
The FT grossly distorts the issue, painting Pugachev as another persecuted oligarch worthy of pity, when in fact, he is widely seen by most financial experts in Moscow, foreign and domestic, to be a died-in-the-wool fraudster, the Russian Bernie Madoff.
The intellectual bankruptcy of The Financial Times is truly breathtaking - not just Khodorkovsky but now any criminal who claims to be a dissident receives accolades from this venerable broadsheet.
Complete story at - Russian news: Financial Times Whitewashes Notorious Russian Fraudster - Russia Insider
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