Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Why an Ex-Oligarch Is Suing Russia for $12 Billion

Sergei Pugachev ran afoul of Vladimir Putin.

September 24, 2015 at 6:00 AM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Fair-weather friend.
Photographer: Sergei Chirkov/AFP/Getty Images

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The $12 billion arbitration claim that Sergei Pugachev filed against Russia this week to obtain restitution of his seized assets could make him just another ex-oligarch with a grievance. Russia has produced a fair number of these in recent years. Yet the story behind the litigation exposes the predatory, inept bureaucracy that now runs the enormous state sector of the Russian economy, and shows how the romance and ambition that once propelled the transition from communism to capitalism met its end.

Vladimir Putin