As a Russian citizen who is following the scandal (and Russian politics), I am a bit baffled by the article.
First, all of its reasoning will fall apart if we examine its premises.
>there is no evidence of Putin’s direct involvement—not in any company involved in the leak, much less in criminal activity, theft, tax evasion, or money laundering. There are documents showing that some of his “friends” have moved “up to two billion dollars” through these Panama-based shell companies.
This isn't true and the author is either deliberately lying or is simply misinformed. What we are talking here are $2b moving through the account in the name of a professional cellist Roldugin. Roldugin is a close friend of Putin and he already denied on record that he owns any big business besides his performances. Those $2b came from various shady deals such as:
- an agreement to buy a bunch of Rosneft stocks which is almost immediately terminated, with $750k in punitive damages being paid to a Roldugin's company;
- an agreement to collect an outstanding debt of 4 billion roubles (around $50m) from Rostelekom (state-owned telecom company), which cost $1 (yeah, one dollar) to the offshore company;
- a shell company providing a debt of $6m to Roldugin's offshore and forgiving it after a few months for $1.
A single deal like this is possible but improbable. Two billion dollars of such deals are impossible and they scream "corruption" and "bribe", and there is no single official in Russia that will demand bribes of this order of magnitude except Putin. Even if it's not him, either he is clueless (and the article in question doesn't make sense) or he knows about it and is okay with it (and therefore he is involved).
>But nothing in the Panama Papers reveals anything new about Putin. It is in fact far less of a story than has been alleged for a long time. For over 10 years, there have been suspicions that Putin has a vast personal fortune, claimed at first to be $20 billion, then $40, $70, even $100… And now all they find is “maybe” a couple of billion belonging to a friend?
This passage implies equality of "allegations" and documents detailing business transactions. I'm not sure if I even need to debunk this, but let's recast it a bit: "It's widely alleged that 9/11 was organized by the government because jet fuel can't melt steel beams. Therefore, documents detailing CIA communication with 9/11 terrorists are nothing new and aren't a big deal". Does it even make sense?
>A “friend of Putin” is linked to companies that channel a couple of billion dollars through the offshore companies. Why? To evade Russian taxes? Really? To conceal ownership? From whom? You don’t need an offshore registration to do that. To evade sanctions? That’s a credible reason, but it makes sense only if the companies were registered after mid-2014. Were they?
I like how the author waves away "to conceal ownership" part as if it's a non-issue. It's a pretty big deal because every dictator wants to a) have a backup plan and for this, they need a safe and anonymous place to hide their money away from their country and b) pass the money to their children so they can spend them somewhere. It's not like you can just load up trucks with $50 bills in Kremlin. However, in general, Western countries don't exactly support this and see such funds as a lever, so you need a concealment.
The rest of the article builds upon this premises, which are false. Therefore, it's all false.
Second, what wonders me is the fact that some Westerners are fascinated by Putin and his cronies. It shows up in the way the author speaks about "Russian hacking capabilities" or Putin's implied geopolitical prowess. No, there is nothing to be fascinated about. Those are people who are managed to waste a golden rain of oil money down the drain (just look at the photos of a typical 1m+ Russian city Omsk [1]) while destroying and corrupting every civic institute in the country. It's a typical reactive behavior of a plutocratic rule that got lucky with oil prices and now tries to stay afloat while having no regard for a wellbeing of their own citizens. I don't believe statesmen like this are even remotely worthy of admiration, and yet some do admire them. This is something beyond my understanding.
[1]: http://varlamov.ru/1637956.html