Take-off and Landing

To a Westerner, the arrest of Dmitry Kamenshchik, billionaire owner of Domodedovo airport – the site of a terrorist attack in 2011 – might look like a case of corporate culpability. It isn’t.

Yesterday, 18th February, Dmitry Kamenshchik, the owner and chairman of the board of directors of Domodedovo airport, was detained as he arrived as a witness for questioning by the Investigative Committee. He was charged under Article 238 of the Criminal Code (“the execution of work or services that do not meet safety requirements, as a result causing the death of two or more people”). It is alleged that Kamenshchik was personally responsible for allowing a terrorist in January 2011 to enter the arrivals terminal, and blow himself up, causing much death and injury. Kamenshchik pleads not guilty.

To a Westerner, this might look like a case of corporate culpability. It isn’t. And it already resembles another celebrated business heist.

Before his arrest, the authorities strongly hinted to Mikhail Khodorkovsky that fleeing abroad would help him to avoid prison. Khodorkovsky remained in Russia. He was arrested on his plane.

Kamenshchik came in for questioning, “prepared” – holding an overnight bag. The investigator, according to Kommersant newspaper, “either in jest, or seriously, asked why Kamenshchik, having an entire airport at his disposal, did not take the next flight out? “Why would I flee? I know that truth is on my side,” he is reported to have said to the investigator.

Before the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the investigation was busy taking ‘hostages.’ Khodorkovsky’s business partner Platon Lebedev, and the YUKOS security officer Alexei Pichugin both found themselves behind bars.

A week or so before the arrest of Kamenshchik, three former employees of the airport were detained, on the same charges as their old boss, including Svetlana Trishina, who has two young children.

The tax claims against Yukos were formulated on the basis of laws adopted later, thus violating the principle that laws cannot be applied retroactively.

It is alleged that in 2010, the Domodedovo administration changed the existing 2007 rules about the conduct of inspections at the entrance to the airport, which led to the greater vulnerability of the terminal buildings, and “increased the likelihood of an explosive device.” But, in fact, the change in regulations did not set any lower requirements for safety; on the contrary, as reported today in Vedomosti, “the number of security services staff, and associated safety costs, actually rose.” The fundamental point is this: at the time of the January 2011 terrorist attack, there was no legislation obliging airports to conduct continuous monitoring of visitors at the entrance to the complex. This regulation only came in to force after the attack in January of 2011. The law, then, was being applied retroactively.

At the district court in Moscow, hearing the YUKOS case, the defence filed dozens of documents showing that all the oil purchased from the company and its subsidiaries was owned by YUKOS, and thus could not have been pilfered by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.

According to Kommersant, at the interrogation on Thursday, “as proof of his innocence, Mr Kamenshchik produced a number of court rulings, which established the fact of there having been no legal requirement for a total inspection [of the entrance to the aiport] at the time of the terrorist attack, and the owner of the airport is therefore not answerable for terrorist actions.” Such arguments made no impression on the investigator.

At the European Court of Human Rights, the Russian state representative, in trying to prove that YUKOS was liable to pay tax, said the company’s oil assets belonged to it legally.

The well-known Russian journalist Yulia Latynina has found a similar legal schizophrenia in the Kamenshchik case. Whereas in Moscow, the investigator accuses Kamenshchik of not effectively (that is, personally) securing the airport terminal; in Strasbourg, however, where Russia is defending itself from a claim made by one of the victims in the Domodedovo terrorist attack, a government official with the rank of Deputy Minister of Justice says quite the opposite: “Full personal control is not required either by existing international legislation … or of the Russian Federation.” His conclusion is very clear: “The government considers the applicant’s allegation of the absence or inadequacy of safety measures at the airport, incorrect and unfounded.”

Sending Mikhail Khodorkovsky to jail, made it much easier to plunder his oil company.

Many of the leading Russian business publications make a similar point about the Kamenshchik case. In Kommersant, for example: “With Mr Kamenshchik behind bars, the longtime ambition to integrate all three metropolitan airports can be implemented.” And in Vedomosti, “Now there will certainly be a willingness to buy Domodedovo.”

Under this government, there is no need to scratch one’s head thinking about how to snaffle a tasty business from the rightful owners. Just use the same techniques that proved so effective against YUKOS: the taking of hostages into custody, arbitrary arrests, the threat of a long stretch inside (Mr Kamenshchik is looking at ten years) … With the help of such methods, dozens of businesses have been stolen. And there will be more. But there is something very particular about the Kamenshchik case that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

This is not the first time that the regime has used a terrorist attack to their advantage. In 2004, after the seizure of the Beslan school, citing security concerns, gubernatorial elections were cancelled. The Kremlin, then only dreaming of a power vertical, shamefully turned to their advantage a tragedy in which 333 people were killed, 186 of them, children). In 2016, what we are looking at is a group of well-connected corporate raiders (a phrase with a much more deadly meaning than anywhere else) making capital out of the Domodedovo terrorist attack, in which 37 people were killed, and 170 injured.

Domodedovo, with its juicy profits, has long been in the sights of the raiders. And now, with the precipitate decline in their rental incomes, they need to look around for other morsels to whet their appetites. If only the Kremlin were really looking to learn from the Domodedovo attack, to make our lives more secure, but that is not what the Kamenshchik case is about.