The Chill from Moscow

According to Lipper HedgeWorld,

Russian authorities have raised the stakes by launching an investigation into Mr. Browder’s Hermitage Fund, the world’s largest Russia-focused hedge fund. The investigation, which is being conducted by Russia’s Ministry of the Interior, is focusing on allegations of tax evasion.According to a report in yesterday’s [June 14] International Herald Tribune, Russian authorities are examining whether a Cyprus-based company called Kameya underpaid some $44 million in taxes.

This definitely has a “Yukos” ring to it. Are big foreign-investment players destined to share a cell with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the bad boy oligarch turned effective CEO?

Some foreign investors have been handled mercilessly by Russian authorities. BP sticks out as a particularly egregious example of a foreign oil major that made the mistake of competing with Gazprom. Its multibilliond-dollar oil venture, TNK-BP, seems to be on the chopping block.

Much of Russian prosecutorial activity seems correlated with involvement in the Russian energy sector (the turf of Gazprom and Rosneft, which are synonymous with the Kremlin and do not hesitate to stomp on competition, foreign or domestic), or with people connected with the Yeltsin “Family” kleptocracy. The fact that Putin has been at war with most of the Russian oligarchic class seems lost on all Western media, especially UK-based media, where tycoons Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovitch and virtually all other Russian oligarchs-in-exile are based.

It remains to be see what, if any, connections the manager of the Hermitage Fund has with any oligarchs on the Kremlin's "blacklist."