Pharma Wars: Purchasing Protection
Summary: Leaked chat logs seized by Russian police show GlavMed and SpamIt co-owner Igor Gusev proposing to buy protection from a criminal investigation by sponsoring the Volleyball Federation of Russia, at a cost of 10 million rubles (about $350,000) officially plus $150,000 in cash. The federation's head, Nikolai Patrushev, directed the FSB from 1999 to 2008 and has been secretary of Russia's Security Council since 2008; Gusev told Krebs in May 2011 he had become a paid sponsor of the Russian Volleyball League hoping to stop the case, and said it did not help much.
What you should know: The alleged price of stalling a Russian investigation was roughly $500,000 routed through a sports federation headed by a former FSB director - and the same leaked logs indicate a rival, Pavel Vrublevsky, paid for law enforcement interest through a basketball league headed by then-deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov. When the enforcement machinery itself is a purchasable service, takedowns and prosecutions abroad stop being reliable signals of who is actually out of business.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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