In the days since Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev had his bank’s headquarters raided by armed police last week, conspiracy theorists have been busy trying to work out why it happened. The question is of more than passing concern even to those with no interest in the affairs of the ebullient Lebedev, an independent-minded ex-KGB man who has dared from time to time to criticise the Kremlin.
To put it crudely, if the reasons for the raid on the National Reserve Bank relate solely to Lebedev, other investors might decide they are only his problem. But if bigger questions are at stake then the affair is a concern for all in the business community.
A front-runner among conspiracy theories is that the raid was timed to coincide with the closing courtroom speech of the jailed billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who last week spoke out at the end of his trial for embezzling all the oil his Yukos oil group produced.
Supporters of Khodorkovsky, who is already serving time following an earlier Yukos-linked fraud conviction, cast him as a symbol of struggle against an oppressive government. The Kremlin, with a rather different view of a man it sees as a tax cheat, may have been anxious to keep his closing remarks off the international front pages. The conspiracy theorists cannot produce a shred of evidence that the Lebedev raid was staged to distract attention from the trial - but they see a remarkable coincidence.
Another theory is that Lebedev is being punished for unspecified political offences. Perhaps for the mildly-critical comments that he has made of the Putin administration. Perhaps stories critical of Moscow that have appeared in the London papers - the Evening Standard and the Independent - that he bought last year.
Whatever the truth - if any - behind these rumours, Lebedev himself is having nothing to do with them.
A week after the raid by armed police on National Reserve Bank headquarters in Moscow, Lebedev told beyondbrics he does not believe the raid was politically motivated.
“I don’t think it’s Putin, I don’t think it’s Medvedev, I don’t think it’s political. I think it’s at the average level, some revenge for something” he said.
Such police raids on private enterprises are common in Russia, and the reasons are often not straight forward. Police corruption is widespread - for a fee, police will raid or arrest businessmen, a practice known as “reiderstvo” in Russian.
The former KGB spy-turned-banker has sent 50 complaints and letters to various Russian ministries and agencies, trying to get to the bottom of why the raid happened.
So far the raid has cost the bank tens of millions of dollars, according to Lebedev, as spooked clients have withdrawn their money.
“This is probably what whoever did this intended, to try to ruin the bank” he said.
According to Lebedev, the police are investigating fraud at Russian Capital Bank, a bank which NRB bought in October 2008. He said he had alerted police to the fraud as early as last year, but the police had done nothing in response to the numerous letters he had sent.
“The question is why they decide to do this now, and why in such a heavy handed way?” Lebedev asked.
Investors will be relieved to hear Lebedev’s assertion that the Kremlin was not involved. That still leaves the question of who was up in the air. The oligarch put it this way:
I have no evidence that this was politically motivated. Until I get such evidence, I don’t want to base my assumptions on rumours. Rumours are all around.
There is nothing Moscow likes better than a good rumour.
