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Economist Who Fled Russia Details Intense Scrutiny Economist Who Fled Russia Details Intense Scrutiny
(about 9 hours later)
MOSCOW — Sergei M. Guriev, a prominent economist who fled Russia a month ago under pressure from investigators, said Friday that he would not return in the “foreseeable future,” until he was certain that he would not face prosecution or other legal constraints. MOSCOW — Hours after the economist Sergei M. Guriev said that he had fled Russia because he feared he would be prosecuted in a politically tinged case, Russia’s largest bank announced that its shareholders had overwhelmingly re-elected him to its board of directors, a show of support that points to rifts within Russia’s ruling class.
He described scrutiny from investigators that had mounted over the spring, culminating in an unexpected demand that he surrender five years’ worth of professional and personal e-mails and submit to searches of his office and home. Worried that investigators were preparing to name him as a suspect in a case involving conflict of interest, and urged on by his friends and colleagues, he left Russia on a single day’s notice on April 30 and has not returned. Mr. Guriev had taken steps to withdraw his candidacy for the board of Sberbank earlier this week, but bank officials said it was too late to remove his name from the ballot, which made Friday’s announcement all the more dramatic. He received more votes than any other candidate — indeed more than the bank’s chairman.
“I won’t go back even if there is a small chance of losing my freedom,” he said by e-mail. “I have not done anything wrong and do not want to live in fear.” Though the votes for Mr. Guriev were cast days ago, before the news broke that he had fled, the results left little doubt that he has the sympathy of a range of powerful figures in the world of finance and government. The bank’s chairman, German Gref, said Mr. Guriev could remain on the board and take part in board meetings by teleconference.
Mr. Guriev said he would now be a visiting professor in the economics department at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, a university in Paris. He delivered a long-scheduled lecture on Thursday at Sciences Po, as the university is called, before a mostly academic audience. Mr. Guriev’s ideas had helped guide economic policy during the presidency of Dmitri A. Medvedev. After Vladimir V. Putin returned to the post, Mr. Guriev became one of the most prominent people to vocally support opposition causes. Since then, prosecutors have questioned him repeatedly in a conflict-of-interest case centering on a 2011 report he co-authored that criticized the prosecution of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, a Putin rival and oil tycoon.
The news of Mr. Guriev’s departure set off tremors among Moscow’s elite this week. Kremlin officials have cast Mr. Guriev’s decision to leave the country as a purely personal one, but many in Moscow saw his flight as part of a new and foreboding phase in the crackdown on political opposition.
Since Vladimir V. Putin returned to the presidency last year, the authorities have initiated prosecutions of protesters and opposition leaders. But Mr. Guriev, though frequently critical of the government, is a consummate insider — he wrote speeches for Dmitri A. Medvedev when he was president and hosted President Obama at the university Mr. Guriev led, the New Economic School, in 2009. The Sherbank vote is “a display of solidarity from what are known as ‘in-system liberals,'” said Yevgeny N. Minchenko, director of the International Institute for Political Expertise in Moscow. Mr. Guriev, he said, is well connected in this circle of powerful technocrats who still dominate in Russia’s economic sphere, corporate world and system of higher education.
In the e-mail, he said he had been questioned repeatedly in a criminal case centering on a 2011 report he co-authored that criticized the prosecution of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon and challenger to Mr. Putin. Investigators have claimed that the experts had a conflict of interest because they received funds many years before through a fund established by Mr. Khodorkovsky’s company, Yukos. For days, Moscow insiders have been debating whether Mr. Guriev had truly been in jeopardy, and on Friday he offered a detailed account in e-mail exchanges of what led to his decision to leave Russia. He said scrutiny from investigators in the court case had mounted over the spring, culminating in a sudden – and, to his mind, alarming – demand that he surrender five years’ worth of professional and personal e-mails and submit to searches of his office and home.
The investigation itself reflects sharp changes that have occurred since Mr. Putin returned to power a year ago. Mr. Medvedev and liberal-leaning players aligned with him have lost influence, and hard-liners in law enforcement view them with suspicion as supporters of the political opposition. The report on the Khodorkovsky prosecution was ordered by Mr. Medvedev’s human rights council. In particular, he was worried that investigators were preparing to name him as a suspect rather than a witness in the conflict-of-interest case. Prosecutors contend that some of the experts who helped write the 2011 report that criticized the prosecution of Mr. Khodorkovsky had received money years earlier from his company, Yukos.
Mr. Guriev said he never received any money from Yukos, or from Menatep, a bank Mr. Khodorkovsky led. Mr. Guriev feared that the authorities could take away his passport and prevent him from leaving Russia – a serious consideration because his wife and children live in France. He said he feared, as well, that they would pressure him to serve as a witness in a new prosecution targeting Mr. Khodorkovsky, who is due for release from prison next year.
He said he had been questioned three times in February and April for a total of 10 hours, and had handed over hundreds of pages of documents and such an enormous volume of e-mails that it took 40 hours to copy the files. His informal exchanges with investigators were disturbing, he said – one of them asked if he was considering leaving Russia. In late April, increasingly anxious, he reached out to well-placed friends and concluded that his political protection had diminished.
As the process advanced, he began to worry that investigators would name him as a suspect rather than a witness and seize his passport — preventing him from visiting his wife and children, who live in France — or pressure him to serve as a witness in another case. He said that if he refused, they could detain him. “Some people told me the risks are acceptable, some advised me not to return, but nobody gave guarantees,” he said.
With Mr. Khodorkovsky scheduled for release next year, his supporters say they fear that prosecutors are preparing a third criminal case against him. “I won’t go back even if there is a small chance of losing my freedom,” he said by e-mail. “I have not done anything wrong and do not want to live in fear.” He added that he had “no issues with Putin or Medvedev.”
Mr. Guriev said he could not reveal the content of the interrogations because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement, which is standard in the Russian system. But in an informal conversation after an interrogation, Mr. Guriev said, one investigator told him that he disapproved of Mr. Medvedev’s desire to solicit expert opinions, like the 2011 report on the Khodorkovsky trial. Moscow’s power elite has been consumed with discussion of the case this week. In pro-government circles, many said Mr. Guriev had over-dramatized the investigation. But most analysts agreed on one thing: Mr. Guriev falls into a category of Moscow power brokers who disagree with the Kremlin’s anti-Western course and intense consolidation of power – but who have generally remained quiet about political changes.
“I told him that our Constitution allows every citizen to disagree with the president,” Mr. Guriev said. Pavel Salin, who directs a political research center at the government’s Financial University, said Mr. Putin has strengthened security and law enforcement bodies, known here as “siloviki,” or “men of power,” who view the West with suspicion.
At another point, an investigator told him that he should be happy because his fate was much brighter than that of Andrei D. Sakharov, a Soviet dissident who was sent into exile and kept under police surveillance in the early 1980s, he said. The same investigator asked whether he was considering leaving Russia. But they may be underestimating the clout of liberals in the government, Mr. Salin said.
The investigator asked if Mr. Guriev had an alibi, a jarring question since he was being questioned as a witness and there were no charges against him, he said. Others argue that liberal-leaning technocrats are entrenched in Mr. Putin’s system, and current infighting has more to do with the dismantling of a competing political force: the team that surrounded Mr. Medvedev during his presidency and hoped he would serve a second term.
Mr. Guriev said he had reached out to a series of well-connected friends and colleagues after the searches in April, during a trip abroad, and came away with the impression that his political protection was diminishing. “Their position is weakening, but this has no connection to their political convictions,” Mr. Minchenko said. “Most of these people have no political convictions at all.”
“Some people told me the risks are acceptable, some advised me not to return, but nobody gave guarantees,” he said. He added: “I have no issues with Putin or Medvedev. It is just that I (and my family) have a subjective dislike of my chances to lose my freedom, given that I have done nothing wrong.” In any case, it is not yet clear whether Russia’s power players are prepared to take real risks in defense of Mr. Guriev.
During his lecture in Paris, before a crowd largely made up of French academics, Mr. Guriev focused on Russia’s investment climate and capital flight, but at times alluded to political tensions and once seemed to refer to his own predicament. “I don’t think anyone will leave a seat in a bank or in the government because of my friend Sergei,” said Vyacheslav Nikonov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, who shrugged off Mr. Guriev’s account of rising pressure as self-promotion.
On Thursday, Mr. Guriev made his first public appearance since leaving Russia, a long-scheduled lecture at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, a university in Paris where he is now a visiting professor.
Mr. Guriev focused on Russia’s investment climate and capital flight, but at times alluded to political tensions and once seemed to refer to his own predicament.
“It’s hard to create a strong and independent judicial system for commercial disputes with a dependent political judicial system,” he said. “There is another scenario — maybe the middle class in Moscow will become too rich and ask for more. How about safety, traffic police, clean air?”“It’s hard to create a strong and independent judicial system for commercial disputes with a dependent political judicial system,” he said. “There is another scenario — maybe the middle class in Moscow will become too rich and ask for more. How about safety, traffic police, clean air?”
“But yet another scenario is that those that ask such questions will be incentivized to leave,” he said, prompting nervous laughter in the room.“But yet another scenario is that those that ask such questions will be incentivized to leave,” he said, prompting nervous laughter in the room.

Patrick Reevell contributed reporting from Paris.

Patrick Reevell contributed reporting from Paris.