Cracking down on Putin’s crony kleptocrats

The odd couple: Vladimir Putin replaced Boris Yeltsin and built a kleptocracy in the process. (Image: Getty)

Sat, 19 Mar 2022

When Vladimir Putin took over from the popular-but-often-pissed Boris Yeltsin, he inherited an economy that had gone through a radical transformation at the hands of neoliberal technocrats – heavily influenced by the American economic theorists. If that sounds familiar there are weird – if a bit stretched – similarities to the Roger Douglas years when New Zealand was a petri dish for Chicago School ideas. One alumnus of the Douglas years, Stephen Jennings, even went on to make a fortune in Yeltsin’s Russia, bec...

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