Reuters’ Recent Anti-Putin Hatchet Job Fails to Satisfy

It is a principle of democratic society that politicians must be subjected to the greatest scrutiny in all their actions.

Journalists owe it to the public to do their best to sniff out any impropriety and bring it to the public’s attention. So when Reuters on 31 March 2016 came out with an article supposed to shed light on operations of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin's inner circle, expectations were high. Yet somehow the story fails to satisfy.

Basically, what the article says is that a Russian businessman, Grigory Baevsky, alleged to be an acquaintance of another Russian businessman, Arkady Rotenberg, alleged to be an acquaintance of Putin, “transferred ownership” of certain properties to three women with alleged links to Putin and rendered a service involving real estate to another one, who happens to be Putin’s daughter.

The service in question involved providing a legal address for registering a company.

Reuters flatly states that “Putin's younger child, Katerina Tikhonova, used the address of a flat owned by Baevsky as her own when registering a new company”. Whether done on purpose or out of ignorance, the phrase seems somehow meant to suggest that Putin’s daughter had the use of the flat as her own.

One has to suspend disbelief to think that Reuters investigative reporters don't know that in Russia it is common practice for owners to make one and the same flat available, for a small fee, to hundreds if not thousands of clients for company registration purposes.

Now, assuming the facts in the article are true, the question that arises is where is the impropriety in all this? Were the transfers made or the services rendered at Putin’s behest and/or at below market prices? No, nothing of the kind is alleged.

The only hint that Reuters drops is when it says that “Public records show that companies co-owned by Baevsky have benefited from state construction contracts worth at least 6 billion roubles (£62.3 million) in the past two years.”

Again, the reader is left wondering as to the significance of this statement. Had the construction contracts been awarded to Baevsky improperly? No, Reuters does not allege that. Were they corrupt? Again, no such allegation by Reuters. So what is the point? Is it that the women that the article mentions can be traced to Putin? Or that people that Putin knows may know people who do real estate and even construction work for the government? Or that people Putin knows know people who may sell real estate to other people Putin knows? Is that even a story?

A simple online search (e.g. here and here) is enough to learn that Grigory Baevsky is a registered Russian businessman, engaged in real estate trade and development. As such, he apparently leases and sells hundreds of properties to hundreds of people in a year. Now, if three of his customers, with which he or his companies had arm's-length transactions, happen to have, let’s grant that much, more or less of a connection to Putin, then what?

According to Reuters, you’ve got Putin dead to rights, that’s what. Except that it looks a bit like attacking US president Barack Obama for Donald Trump’s selling a property to someone with links to Hillary Clinton. The story would have had more impact and credibility had it at least alleged that the properties (services) in question were provided at an undervalue or that other impropriety was involved. But the article studiously avoids the subject of price or any allegation of misconduct. Even so it can’t help implying that no impropriety as to price was involved.

One of the women in question expressly contradicts any such suggestion, saying that she had bought her property on a mortgage she still keeps paying off. And the reference to Putin’s daughter seems downright ridiculous. Supplying a legal address for a company is a service so common in Russia and one that costs so little (in any event less than a USD 100), that one can hardly find any scope for wrongdoing there by any stretch of imagination.

Reuters would have done a great service to the public if it presented a convincing argument, in fact any argument, of misconduct on the part of Putin. But by publishing an article ominously titled “The property manager and Putin's friends”, yet failing even to point to the reader where to look for any impropriety on Putin’s part, it falls way short of expectations.

The public expects an honest, well-researched and substantive exposure of misdeeds, if any exist, of politicians, including Putin, not hatchet jobs that only serve to damage Reuters standing and credibility as a news organization.