It’s Time We Hold All Oligarchs Accountable

Truth is the first casualty of war, particularly if it means challenging the gospel of free market capitalism.    

As the war in Ukraine has ground on, a wide range of international sanctions have effectively shackled the Russian economy.  In an effort to reign in Putin, Western powers have waged a financial battle and talked a lot about trying to put the hurt on “Russian oligarchs.” 

But, as renowned economist Thomas Piketty has pointed out in the Guardian, the measures enacted thus far will inflict plenty of pain on ordinary Russians not responsible for Putin’s imperial ambitions 

To avoid this kind of indiscriminate harm, Piketty argues, a new type of sanction is necessary that would more surgically target the elite, going after the top .02% of the population who have most benefited from their connections to the Putin regime.  

By establishing an international financial registry, we could track the assets of the oligarchy and do great harm to their financial standing, thus forcing them to pressure the Kremlin to change course or face ruin.  

As devastating a financial weapon as this would be, it has yet to be implemented for predictable reasons.  Piketty explains: 

• So why has progress still not been made in this direction? For one simple reason: western wealthy people fear that such transparency will ultimately harm them. This is one of the main contradictions of our time. The confrontation between “democracies” and “autocracies” is overplayed, forgetting that western countries share with Russia and China an unbridled, hyper-capitalist ideology, and a legal, fiscal and political system that is increasingly favourable to large fortunes.

• In Europe and the United States, everything is done to distinguish useful and deserving western “entrepreneurs” from harmful and parasitic Russian, Chinese, Indian or African “oligarchs”. But the truth is that they have much in common. In particular, the immense prosperity of multimillionaires on all continents since the 1980s and 90s can be explained to a large extent by the same factors, and in particular by the favours and privileges granted to them. 

• The free movement of capital without fiscal and collective compensation is an unsustainable system in the long term. It is by questioning this common doxa that we will be able to effectively sanction autocracies and promote another development model.

Many of those most responsible for the excesses of the Putin regime will, despite all the tough talk coming from the White House, remain relatively safe from real harm so as not to expose our own financial elite to unwanted transparency.  Some things, it appears, are more essential to the global elite than democracy.  

On the corporate front, while it is true that a good number of companies have stopped profiting from the Russian market, many others have taken largely symbolic actions or simply refused to take any action at all.  

As Michael Hiltzik reported in the LA Times, Yale business professors Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian have compiled a “hall of shame” that outs companies for “digging in” and refusing to stop doing business in Russia.   

Who makes the list of corporate bad actors?  It should surprise no one that Koch Industries, infamous in progressive circles for their decades-long funding of rightwing causes, is there along with a host of others.  Hiltzik outlines some of the lowlights: 

• Among the consumer companies identified as “digging in” are the fast food chain Subway; Reebok; Bacardi (makers of its eponymous rum, Dewar’s scotch and Grey Goose vodka, among other brands); the electronics companies LG and Asus; and Natura, owner of Avon cosmetics . . . 

• The most notable companies identified by Sonnenfeld as “digging in” are three major oilfield services firms, all based in Houston: Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Schlumberger.

• Neither the U.S. nor the EU has ordered the oilfield companies to withdraw, but little would keep them from halting their operations in Russia or suspending their partnerships with Russian petroleum companies.

So, just as it was naïve to expect the corporate sector to hold firm and stop funding Republicans after the January 6th insurgency that sought to overturn our own democracy, it is equally unwise to expect the corporate world to abandon the profit motive to save the world from autocracy.  

Oligarchs in Russia and the United States benefit from a global system that has privatized gain and socialized losses, creating historic levels of inequality.  We live in a world where fossil fuel companies take in obscene profits while the world teeters on the cliff-edge of unthinkable war and catastrophic climate change.  It is that system, along with the ambitions of foreign and would-be domestic autocrats, that threatens our future over the long-term.  

It's time we hold all oligarchs accountable, both the Russian variety and those closer to home.