Retribution, Corruption or Both in Russia Mayor’s Bribery Case
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Version 0 of 1. YAROSLAVL, Russia — Just last week, Mayor Yevgeny R. Urlashov’s political career seemed as bright as the generous summer light that drenches this ancient citadel of onion-domed churches and stone-walled monasteries. Elected last year as one of the few anti-establishment leaders of a major Russian city, he was preparing to head an opposition slate in regional parliamentary elections in September. There were also stirrings about a future run for governor. On Monday, Mr. Urlashov sat in a city jail, charged in a multimillion-dollar bribery scandal and denied bail, while his lawyer was in the prison commissary buying essentials: socks; toothpaste and shampoo; a plastic bowl and mug; a spoon; 20 packs of dried noodle soup; tea; coffee; two thin towels; five blue handkerchiefs; an extra bowl. The leader of a city of nearly 600,000 people, Mr. Urlashov suddenly found his life downsized to a few square feet. Some sponges. Cleaning solution. A handbook on Russia’s consumer protection laws hung on a wall. “Does he need a toilet brush in there?” the lawyer, Mikhail B. Pisarets, asked the store clerk, pointing to a green one. On the surface, the Yaroslavl case fits a sinister pattern in Russian politics: opposition upstart deals the Kremlin an embarrassing defeat only to get his comeuppance in a politically motivated prosecution. But while Mr. Urlashov, 45, asserts that he is innocent, his case seems less a clear-cut example of political retribution than a cautionary tale of how even the most reform-minded politicians can become ensnared in Russia’s pervasive public corruption. Interviews here in Yaroslavl with his supporters and his accuser, with his daughter and his estranged campaign manager, as well as evidence collected by the authorities, including tapped phone calls and video of Mr. Urlashov and an associate secretly recorded in the mayor’s favorite Azerbaijani restaurant, suggest that the accusations of bribery and counterallegations of an investigation fueled by political revenge could both be true at the same time. The criminal case against Mr. Urlashov is plausible enough that his main political patron, the billionaire industrialist and owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, has reacted cautiously, saying that his political party, Civic Platform, would keep Mr. Urlashov at the top of its slate in the September elections, but that the merits of the charges must be decided in court. During a visit to Yaroslavl on Sunday for the party’s official nominating ceremony, Mr. Prokhorov criticized the authorities for making a show of Mr. Urlashov’s arrest, and noted that under the Russian Constitution, the mayor should be presumed innocent. “No one has a right to accuse anybody before the court’s decision,” he said. But Igor V. Blokhin, who ran Mr. Urlashov’s mayoral campaign, said the charges appeared to be legitimate. In an interview, Mr. Blokhin said Mr. Urlashov early in his term had tried to root out the many entrenched corruption schemes in city government but had decided that it was easier to use them for his own purposes, and quickly succumbed to the trappings of power. “He began to treat the city as personal property,” said Mr. Blokhin, who broke with the mayor last fall and has since formed a new political group called Public Control. “Probably in his soul, taking money, he was thinking it was his, all his. He just took a little bit, maybe for the party, maybe for himself.” Mr. Blokhin added, “Who doesn’t take in Russia?” The local and federal authorities have accused Mr. Urlashov of extorting more than $420,000 from a local businessman, and seeking $800,000 more, in exchange for a large city contract for street cleaning and road repair. A deputy mayor and two of Mr. Urlashov’s top aides were also arrested and are said to be cooperating with investigators. In an interview, the businessman who leveled the accusations of extortion, Sergei V. Shmelyov, said that Mr. Urlashov had initially urged him not to bid for the city contract but that he had refused to back down. “I was told, ‘In this case, you have to express gratitude.’ ” he said over green tea at a local cafe. “They wrote on a piece of paper: 6 percent.” Who gave him the paper? “The mayor himself,” Mr. Shmelyov said. In a statement from the detention center where he is being held along the southern bank of the Kotorosl River, Mr. Urlashov called his arrest “a provocation” that had been “prepared with the goal of settling accounts with me on pure political motives.” “I don’t have anything to do with what I am accused of,” he wrote, adding, “I have always rejected even the hints at bribes.” There is no doubt that the Kremlin and its allies took particular care to make a show of Mr. Urlashov’s arrest, and have wasted no time in declaring his guilt. State-controlled television showed a dramatic video of his arrest by security agents in black ski masks, camouflage uniforms and bulletproof vests, along with bundles and bundles of cash and secretly recorded audio of conversations apparently with Mr. Shmelyov allegedly pressing him for bribes. The authorities also released video of Mr. Urlashov in a private room in a local restaurant handing a newspaper to an associate who uses it to wrap an item — supposedly a bundle of cash — and returns it to the mayor, who puts it in his briefcase. The authorities even accused his daughter, Anastasia Urlashova, an 18-year-old law student, of trying to hide $500,000 in a neighbor’s apartment. “This is not true; it’s an absurdity,” she said, adding, “I am a little girl. I can’t carry this amount of money.” Clearly shaken by the events that began unfolding the evening of July 2, Ms. Urlashova left a cup of cappuccino untouched in front of her as she described how she had been awakened by her father’s press secretary and told of his arrest, and how security agents had arrived later and spent five minutes searching her bedroom while she stood by holding her cat, Naomi. She said that no money had been seized during the search and that her father was innocent. “My father is kind of an ideological person,” she said. “He is far from being a materialist.” She added, “I know he was in love with his work.” Mr. Blokhin, the former campaign manager, said there was no question that audio surveillance recordings released by the authorities were of Mr. Urlashov. “This is the way he really speaks, his intonation,” he said. “There is no doubt it’s him.” Mr. Blokhin said that as Mr. Urlashov had settled into his role as the city’s chief executive he had developed finer tastes. “He began to wear expensive clothes,” he said. “He had a Rado wristwatch. He ate only in restaurants.” Mr. Urlashov also traveled abroad, Mr. Blokhin said, to France, Italy, Iran and Costa Rica. “It’s an awful disappointment,” he said, adding that he feared voters would become apathetic. “For me, it’s a personal tragedy,” he added. “I apologized for bringing this mayor to power.” City residents had mixed views on the case. Sergei Kachalov, 32, who owns a construction business, said he had voted for Mr. Urlashov and believed him innocent. “Everybody thinks it’s a setup,” he said. “He positioned himself as a smart, young politician who had his own ambitions. And as soon as he was elected, we saw that some road repairs began to be done.” Irina Shemakhanova, 67, a lifelong Yaroslavl resident, said she had not voted for Mr. Urlashov, but did not believe he would risk his new position so soon. “He didn’t fight for this — he didn’t sit in this chair to steal,” said Ms. Shemakhanova, a retired bookkeeper. “As soon as he was elected, they began to pour mud on him in every way possible.” She added that residents wanted a fresh face in City Hall. “We got sick and tired of the old guys; something had to change.” Yakov S. Yakuvshev, a businessman who ran against Mr. Urlashov as the United Russia candidate and lost in a landslide, expressed no satisfaction in his rival’s downfall. “We are all ashamed of what happened,” he said. “It turns out that we are all spotted in mud.” |