Russian capital flight

[Mark Jones]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> [from Johnson's Russia List]
> 
> From: fweir at rex.iasnet.ru
> Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998
> Subject: Capital Flight
> 
>         By Fred Weir
>         MOSCOW (CP) -- Capital has hemorrhaged out of post-Soviet
> Russia on a scale unseen anywhere else in the world, leaving the
> country without needed resources to rebuild its economy, a joint
> Canadian-Russian report says.
>         The 18-month study, sponsored by Russia's official
> Institute of Economics and the University of Western Ontario's
> Centre for the Study of International Economic Relations,
> concluded that as much as $140-billion (US) -- almost $2-billion
> per month --  fled Russia during the first six years of market
> reforms.

I think what's interesting about this is not what the reports says -- 
it's hardly news that the place wuz robbed -- and I'm sure Zyuganov and
many others are right to argue that the real loss is at least $300bn.

It's the word 'official'. This is like the very first tentative
admissions by the Allies in 1944-45 that possible those 'resettlement'
camps at Ravensbruck, Auschwirz etc weren't quite all they seemed.
Great crimes have been committed against the Russian people, amounting
to genocide. Every semi-official admission of material grounds
for alleging such crimes is important.

Mark