At the end of May, the international court of arbitration in Zurich ruled that ‘witness number 7’, a person easily identifiable as minister of telecoms Leonid Reiman, “allowed his personal enrichment to take precedence over - and at the expense of - the state assets which he, as a high-ranking public official, had an obligation to protect and to ensure their efficient management. He ignored his duties while seeking to enrich himself”.

The court found witness number 7 guilty of abuse of office, criminal conduct and involvement in money laundering. Reiman denies the charges. And they are fairly serious charges for a government minister, particularly just two weeks after president Putin announced a government offensive against corrupt bureaucrats.

And yet the court ruling was greeted with stunning silence by the Russian press. Not a word of it on Channel One, NTV or Rossiya. This perhaps does not surprise us. But Ekho Moskvy likewise didn’t mention the story in its morning news. Ren-TV opened its news with a “sensational” story – the population had fallen by 200,000 in the first quarter of 2006, in other words in exact line with the trend of the last few years. Sensational indeed.

Alone among the Russian-language newspapers, Vedomosti seemed aware that this was a big story which had to be covered. It put it where it deserved to be – on the front page. Izvestia, recently bought by Gazprom-Media, led with an interview with Anatoly Chubais, about the 1996 election. Hot news.

Moskovski Komsomolets led with a story about satellites in space monitoring poppy cultivation. Kommersant ran a story a few days later which referred to the Zurich ruling, but didn’t focus on the fact Reiman had been found guilty of criminal conduct. The Moscow Times was the only other Russian paper to give the ruling proper coverage.

A few days later, as if surprised by the lack of reaction to its initial story, Vedomosti published another cover story, which explained the court ruling in more detail. No other Russian press agency picked it up.

I asked Igor Tsukanov, one of the two Vedomosti journalists who wrote the original story, whether the paper thought it was risky to run the piece. He said: “There was some concern, but our policy is to write about the nation we have. Besides, our shareholders [the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal] also covered the story, so they obviously share our position.”

I have to say when I saw the Zurich court ruling, I and other foreign journalists thought it spelled the end of Reiman’s political career, that he’d be forced to resign.

For the first time, a political ally of the president’s would be brought to account because of corruption, rather than merely political enemies. What a major step forward that would be. What a sign that Putin really did run a ‘dictatorship of the law’, as he claimed to do, what an indication that nobody was above the law, however friendly with the president he may be.

Instead, the lack of government action against Reiman, and the press silence with which this was received, speaks volumes. It speaks far louder than any expensive Kremlin PR initiatives to improve Russia’s image. If there’s one person who justifies the argument that the reign of Putin has led not to the elimination of the oligarch class but simply to the creation of new oligarchs, it’s Leonid Reiman.

Other analysts point to Alexei Miller of Gazprom, Igor Sechin of Rosneft, Vladimir Yakunin of Russian Railways or Simon Vainshtock of Transneft as examples of Putin-era oligarchs. But they don’t have any major stakes in the companies which they manage. I’m sure they’re doing very well for themselves, but they haven’t used their positions to transfer major stakes from the state to themselves. Reiman, according to the Zurich court, has. He’s done precisely what the oligarchs did in the 1990s.

And he’s also the person in charge of the possible future privatization of Svyazinvest, in which one of the main bidders will be Telecominvest, one of the main shareholders in which is IPOC, the Bermuda fund in which Reiman has shares, according to the court in Zurich. So there’s a very good chance he could do it again.

The best defence against corruption on this scale is a free press that’s not afraid of government retribution. But both the TV and print press is less free by the day. The TV stations went first, with Ren-TV the last terrestrial news channel to come under Kremlin control. Independent papers were likewise bought up by the Kremlin. Izvestia was bought last year, and sources at Prof-Media say they may be forced to sell Komsomolskaya Pravda in the near future too, probably to Gazprom-Media or to Russian Railways.

But in fact, judging by the press reaction to the Zurich ruling, the Kremlin doesn’t need to buy any more press outlets. The remaining independent ones know what is acceptable and what isn’t.

So Reiman will probably get away with it. No one cares if he steals assets worth billions of dollars. He’s a friend of Putin’s, and Putin’s a good guy. The oil price keeps rising, everybody’s doing well. Keep your heads down, watch some Dom-2 or Moya Prekrasnaya Nyanya. Go buy yourself a new mobile phone. Take it easy. Vse prekrasno.

Julian Evans, a British freelance journalist based in Moscow.

June 5, 2006