2014 Ukraine Clinton 1994 Budapest Memoradum Gazprom Russi

2014 Ukraine Clinton 1994 Budapest Memoradum Gazprom Russia Bill Browder Germany Gerhard Schroeder Angela Merkal Putin Obama

National Post
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
17 May 2014, Sat \u2022 Page 28

Broken promises leave Ukraine at Putins mercy

Diane Francis

Between 1994 and 1996, Ukraine surrendered the world's third largest
nuclear weapons stockpile to Russia for dismantling in return for promises of
territorial protection made by the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China.
This was called the Budapest Memorandum.

Now 20 years later, those five signatories have completely reneged on
their promise to keep Ukraine intact. The defenseless country is under siege
from Russia and next week, on May 25, an election will be held to determine its
future. The prospects are far from propitious. The last President of Ukraine
was driven out of power but managed to disarm the country further by selling
its military equipment, for personal profit, to African dictators.

Another nation-state culprit is Germany. The world's most reluctant
super-power has done nothing because it's been politically and economically
co-opted by Russia.

Its former chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, sits on the board of Moscow's
giant Gazprom, is close to President Vladimir Putin (describes him as a
"flawless democrat") and is a backroom obstructionist to sanctions or
actions.

He enjoys more influence than ever, despite being out of government
since 2005, because Chancellor Angela Merkel was forced to form a coalition
with his Socialist Party. So German and European sanctions are minimal compared
with President Barack Obama's, even though Ukraine is a European problem. And
Britain, the favored playground of the Russian oligarchs, has done nothing to
uphold the Budapest Memorandum.

The only strategy that will work is hardball on the part of Ukraine and
the West, according to American money manager and Russian expert Bill Browder
in an interview. He visited Canada this month to convince Ottawa to adopt a
version of the Magnitsky Law passed in 2012 that he proposed. The legislation
was named after his Russian lawyer who was tortured and murdered by Russian
officials trying to defend trumped-up corruption charges against Browder.

The Law has blacklisted, and sanctioned, 18 Russians and their
companies, making them "financial pariahs" for stealing $230-million
in tax rebates from Moscow based on fraudulent documents, he said. Several
countries have frozen or seized apartment buildings and assets at the request
of American authorities and Browder wants all countries to pass such a law.

\u201cThe amount of corruption is staggering and today there is nowhere to hide.
You can't launder large amounts of money because of the global banking system,
money transfers and Internet," he said. "On the US. Department of
Treasury Web site it states that 50 of the oligarchs are holding Putin's money.
He has become one of the richest men in the world."

Browder said U.S. intelligence is gathering information to hunt down
Putin's assets or for those close to him to expose the level of corruption. Browder,
a money manager, knows Russia and became the country's biggest foreign
investor. Soon he realized that the corruption was so pervasive that his
investors were threatened. So he began blowing the whistle on egregious actions
and frauds. In 2006, Putin and his cronies drove him out of the country.

"The sanctions that Washington has imposed since the annexation of
Crimea are good and attack Putin's oligarch trustees. But Europe has been
duplicitous. Germany has been duplicitous. There is not a single oligarch on
their list of those sanctioned and that's where the oligarchs keep their money,
in Europe," he told an audience gathered at an Estonian Center, part of
the Central and Eastern European Council in Toronto.

Browder believes this is an economic Cold War, not a shooting one, and
Putin is playing poker, not playing Napoleon. Russian ethnics in neighbouring
countries can agitate and some countries, notably, Bulgaria, have become
dependent on Russia.

"Putin is going to

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