You probably know by now that Russia
is hosting the World Cup
and you may have seen
or heard how it helps Russia restore their
pretty complicated image around the globe.
But what you may not have heard
is what's going on inside Russia
during the tournament
and how a huge enterprise like
this beloved international sporting event
can actually pad the pockets of Putin's
friends.
That's what we're going to dive into today
and some of you guys gave me a pretty hard
time after the last episode for daring
to bring politics into the World Cup.
But bear with me people
or dealing with facts.
For example
did you know that on the opening day of
the World Cup,
the Russian government announced a plan
to raise the retirement age across
the country by five extra
years for men
and eight years for women.
Many Russian people were outraged
but that outrage was barely heard.
And the Russian national teams surprising
in Round of 16 win over the football
giant, Spain,
was certainly a welcome distraction
for the government.
There were a planned protest against the new
retirement age in 30 different
cities on July 1st
but none of those protests were allowed
to happen in any of the World Cup
host cities.
And they were soon superseded by celebrations
across the nation over that surprise
when anyway.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov
took the opportunity to compare the football
triumph to how Russia celebrated
the end of World War Two.
Seriously.
What might also be interesting to
those Russians protesting
and to Russia watchers around the world
are the details of how the government
uses big events like the World Cup
or the Sochi Olympics to make the
rich even richer.
I spoke to journalist Oliver Bullough
who has researched
and written about corruption
and this part of the world for a long time
about how this all works.
He told me one major challenge
in knowing the true amount of money spent
on the World Cup
or where it's been spent
or who it's going to
is the lack of transparency about
contracts and government records in
Russia.
The U.S. has a president who won't release
his tax returns.
Russia has a president
and a government who make it very,
very hard for independent
watchdogs to investigate their finances.
It's hard to know.
I mean we may never really get an accurate
estimate of how much money has
been spent or made because of that recordkeeping.
To be honest I don't think even within
a billion
or two we won't know.
Oh Wow that's a big margin.
Yeah yeah I mean you know they've
just hidden it away.
It's done, it's dusted.
You know again the difference between
this and the Sochi Games was the Sochi
Games was all taking place within a very
small area really.
Everything was in one place whereas
in this you've got you know a stadium being built
in Kaliningrad which is
in the middle of the European Union,
a bit of Russia surrounded by the EU,
and then all the way over to the Volga.
So down to Sochi out to St.
Petersburg. It's a really broad
expanse and you know the Russian civil
society has taken a real beating
in the last six seven eight years.
It is possible that everything
is brilliant.
That everyone who works in all these stadiums,
including the North Koreans who work in the stadium
in St. Petersburg,
that everyone got paid an enormous amount of money
and they're all happy
and everything is wonderful
and it's perfectly possible that
all the construction contracts were totally legal
and legitimate and all that.
But it's weird if that is the
case that that hasn't been in some way
advertised.
Normally it can hide things like
this.
That is certainly indicative of
a measure of shadiness if not a very
large quantity of shadiness.
The prices for those contracts are often inflated
right? Right. Very hard in very difficult circumstances
to shed a bit of light on this process.
There's no one checking all of this.
There isn't a sort of a single item on the balance
sheet saying money being spent on the World Cup.
It's sort of road expenditure
in Mordovian region of the Russian
Federation. No one has time
really to go in
and look at every single line to find
out where the money is hidden.
So yes you know
I don't think it's a sort of insane
crazy smorgasbord of corruption like the
Sochi Olympics was just because that was much
more money in Russia then but it's still
I think you know 100 percent certain
that some people who are very good friends who
Putin have made a very good
living out of building the stadiums
and doing the various contracts
for this games.
It's interesting you said that you think it's
probably a smaller level of corruption
than Sochi because I thought one of the
sources in your article had said that it
would be more for the World Cup.
When the championship was awarded in 2010.
I think probably everyone was licking their lips
and saying you know Socci was the appetizer
this is going to be the main course.
But then 2014
happened.
Russia annexed Crimea
and invaded eastern Ukraine,
then there were Western sanctions.
The ruble lost half of
its value against major western currencies.
That basically meant there's just much
less money to steal.
As of, obviously there's money to steal,
there's always money to steal right,
but there's nowhere near that kind
of money to steal that there was in Sochi.
That was just a,
you know, an all you can eat buffet for corrupt
officials, whereas
this is you know it's
more of a kind of
you know a tasting menu for corrupt officials.
It's still nice
but you know it's a limited quantity.
Obviously Putin's friends are benefiting
but do you think Putin himself
is benefiting financially?
Like personally
and obviously not
with the Kremlin assets but his personal.
I don't think Russia really works that way.
When Putin's friends benefit,
Putin benefits because essentially
if he wants something he just asks for it
and they give it to him.
Right. Their current accounts
are his current accounts, their checking
accounts are his checking accounts.
Their stuff is his stuff.
Welcome to Russia.
What Oliver said about how Putin's
friend's stuff is essentially also his
stuff is a good distillation
of the way that bribery corruption
and favoritism works in Russia.
Don't forget to check out Part 1 of our interview
where we discuss how Russia landed the
hosting rights to the World Cup in the first
place
and how it led to a corruption investigation
that ended up taking down several members
of the FIFA executive team.
It's a fascinating story
and that leads into how the next host country
is Qatar,
a nation that gets so hot in the summer
they actually decided to host the World Cup in
November 2022.
Stay tuned for more from the Russia desk.