In December of last year, the Russian government privatized 19.5 percent of the oil giant Rosneft, an act hailed by some Western writers as a “personal triumph” of Vladimir Putin. It took less then a month for Russian media to more or less confirm the healthy skepticism of those familiar with how Putin’s regime operates: the so-called privatization was anything but a transparent sale to a private buyer. Yesterday RBC reported that the cash paid to the Russian budget – 10.2 billion euro – was wholly financed by VTB, a bank in which the Russian government has a 60.9 percent ownership stake.

On the surface, the deal at first looked pretty descent. A consortium comprising Swiss oil trader Glencore and the Qatari sovereign wealth split the stake in Rosneft equally. The Italian bank Intesa was financing the deal, but was said to be bringing in several unnamed Russian banks to participate.

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