Couldn't it be merely a criminal claiming to be a political victim to avoid extradition? Never heard the name here at all, let alone in a political context.
I myself know from close hearsay a fellow who happily traded grain until 2022 when he left for US with $50m of a bank's money in his pocket. A few people in the bank lost their jobs as a result. Those people would certainly welcome that critic back.
I guess he could be, but Interpol themselves seems to disagree with that since they canceled the request after looking into it deeper:
> After Pestrikov had spent almost two years on the wanted list, the CCF ruled that his case was predominantly political. He showed us CCF documents that said the information Russia had provided was "generic and formulaic" and there had been an "inadequate explanation" of the alleged crime. Interpol cancelled the request for Pestrikov's detention.
Not denying that Russia abuses Interpol, but I have doubts about this particular narrative that he was some kind of "government critic." From what I can find, he privatized a state corporation in the 90s for pennies (lots of very shady deals back then, usually facilitated by organized crime). From 2010-2020, I can find media reports about his legal problems with tax evasion. In 2021, there was a case where he threatened people with murder while holding a rifle. He was perfectly fine living in Putin's Russia until 2022, when he took 250 mln from the company's budget without consulting the board of directors and left Russia (and prosecutors also found that the privatization in the 90s was illegal). I suspect he's part of the 90s mafia who's now on the Interpol list, which makes his life abroad questionable, so now he has to spin the narrative that it's a political case.
And yet despite his alleged criminal activities Russian prosecutors have failed to present an evidence-backed case that would warrant the notice to Interpol. That is why it was cleared.
The point here isn't whether this guy clean or not. The point is that you can't trust allegations made by Russia. Any allegations made by Russia are what is called "fruit of the poisoned tree".
And just for example, Navalny was put in prison for alleged and proven in a so called "Russian court of law" financial/commercial crimes.
>He was perfectly fine living in Putin's Russia until 2022
That suggests that Russia was for 20+ years fine with whatever financial crimes this guy had been committing as long as he played ball (and like many there continue to commit while staying loyal to the regime), and is really using these crimes to get him now for political motives. (and, yes, looking at current Russian opposition you can find a bunch of guys who is rich and most probably made their money in Russia not in completely legal way, and i honestly don't have respect for them, yet it is clear that the regime is going after them purely for their opposition)
>and prosecutors also found that the privatization in the 90s was illegal
there has been whole wave of such findings recently (and Supreme Court specifically removed statute of limitations here). As result the privatization is usually nullified, the property gets confiscated by the government, and later it ends up in the hands of Putin's friends, family, loyalists. It is a huge redistribution of assets under the guise of "Russian law"
I’ll just assume this is correct because I believe the Russian government has mastered the art of just lying when there are no consequences, but if I was being critical, this phrase is giving me pause for evaluating the conclusions.
My view is that they never brought any balance. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Global institutions, especially NGOs, wrecked havoc. My view is that the nexus of power is guaranteed to be corrupt. Inescapably so. It's just a number's game; in any game/competition with many participants, the winners who rise to the top will always be in the category of "the cheaters who didn't get caught". Given enough power, they can use that power to cover up their tracks and craft narratives to make themselves look good and their opponents look bad. So there's nothing worse than centralization. Anything which centralizes power is bound to be corrupt and harmful.
If corruption is an unavoidable property of power, centralization is not the core problem, scale is.
Decentralized systems still concentrate power, they just do it informally, locally, without visibility or accountability.
Eliminating institutions does not remove the nexus of power, it just relocates it to actors with fewer constraints and less scrutiny.
If winners are always cheaters who did not get caught, then weakening shared rules only selects for better cheaters, not better outcomes. At least institutions create friction, records, and points of contestation. Without them, power does not disappear, it simply becomes cruder and harder to challenge.
The claim that centralization is uniquely corrupt assumes fragmentation produces virtue.
History suggests it mostly produces unchecked local coercion and chaos, not justice.
Currently in my country (Austria) there is a court process against an official who made register look-ups of critical journalists who live here and handed the address to FSB-Agents who later broke into this journalists apartment. The ruzzians are completely unscrupulous.
Wait a sec, isn't the Austrian intelligence officer to blame here for doing the spying on Russia's behalf?
And Austrian politics in general have historically been very pro-Russia since the cold war, with Putin visiting the wedding of Austrian officials, and Austrian politicians getting jobs at Russian oil and gas companies after the end of their mandates. Also, Austrian Raiffeisen bank still has operations in Russia.
So maybe Austria could have some introspection and drain the swamp of Russian assets instead of throwing all the blame on Russia as it has no agency in its internal politics and business tie with Russia.
Became used in some circles due to russians using the symbol "Z" for their new great patriotic war. It can be seen as an attempt not to lump all russians together, but instead to distinguish the pro-war group (which, if you like limits, tends toward 1).
This is why I always flag these types of posts that are political and not tech related, they quickly devolve to Reddit-style racial / ethnic hatred if conversations about geopolitical rivals or regional hatred and name calling if domestic politics. There's other platforms for all that.
You can pay $500 online in cryptocurrency to find out if there are interpol notices regarding a person. It's a convenient feature of interpol being so... international.
Such services are frequently advertised on forums like rutor
> The majority of Red Notices are restricted to law enforcement use only.
> Extracts of Red Notices are published at the request of the member country concerned and where the public’s help may be needed to locate an individual or if the individual may pose a threat to public safety.
I myself know from close hearsay a fellow who happily traded grain until 2022 when he left for US with $50m of a bank's money in his pocket. A few people in the bank lost their jobs as a result. Those people would certainly welcome that critic back.
> After Pestrikov had spent almost two years on the wanted list, the CCF ruled that his case was predominantly political. He showed us CCF documents that said the information Russia had provided was "generic and formulaic" and there had been an "inadequate explanation" of the alleged crime. Interpol cancelled the request for Pestrikov's detention.
And just for example, Navalny was put in prison for alleged and proven in a so called "Russian court of law" financial/commercial crimes.
>He was perfectly fine living in Putin's Russia until 2022
That suggests that Russia was for 20+ years fine with whatever financial crimes this guy had been committing as long as he played ball (and like many there continue to commit while staying loyal to the regime), and is really using these crimes to get him now for political motives. (and, yes, looking at current Russian opposition you can find a bunch of guys who is rich and most probably made their money in Russia not in completely legal way, and i honestly don't have respect for them, yet it is clear that the regime is going after them purely for their opposition)
>and prosecutors also found that the privatization in the 90s was illegal
there has been whole wave of such findings recently (and Supreme Court specifically removed statute of limitations here). As result the privatization is usually nullified, the property gets confiscated by the government, and later it ends up in the hands of Putin's friends, family, loyalists. It is a huge redistribution of assets under the guise of "Russian law"
There are several in my area of London who live in opulent mansions (one looks very Trump-like) bought with soviet privatization wealth.
Some of their houses: https://www.mylondon.news/news/property/london-mansions-owne...
a good example is the BTCe crypto exchange founder
> The data is not complete…
Institutions were meant to extend balance beyond great powers, to smaller states with no leverage.
So if those institutions are weakened or weaponized, who exactly benefits, and how does that improve the overall condition of humanity?
Decentralized systems still concentrate power, they just do it informally, locally, without visibility or accountability.
Eliminating institutions does not remove the nexus of power, it just relocates it to actors with fewer constraints and less scrutiny.
If winners are always cheaters who did not get caught, then weakening shared rules only selects for better cheaters, not better outcomes. At least institutions create friction, records, and points of contestation. Without them, power does not disappear, it simply becomes cruder and harder to challenge.
The claim that centralization is uniquely corrupt assumes fragmentation produces virtue.
History suggests it mostly produces unchecked local coercion and chaos, not justice.
But we see how exactly the opposite has happened, and Russia is giving up its sovereignty in favor of China.
https://www.reuters.com/world/austrian-ex-intelligence-accus...
Wait a sec, isn't the Austrian intelligence officer to blame here for doing the spying on Russia's behalf?
And Austrian politics in general have historically been very pro-Russia since the cold war, with Putin visiting the wedding of Austrian officials, and Austrian politicians getting jobs at Russian oil and gas companies after the end of their mandates. Also, Austrian Raiffeisen bank still has operations in Russia.
So maybe Austria could have some introspection and drain the swamp of Russian assets instead of throwing all the blame on Russia as it has no agency in its internal politics and business tie with Russia.
Hmm, nope.
It doesn't say how he found out, I would imagine he's regularly checking online, he was stopped at a control check somewhere?
Seems to me that most people wouldn't have a clue until they're being arrested. But again another scummy behaviour from the Russian government.
It might as well just be prudent to ignore their requests altogether. Boy who cried wolf.
Edit : it did indeed say how. I missed it.
> After he fled to France, he was worried that the Kremlin might try to target him there, so he contacted Interpol
Such services are frequently advertised on forums like rutor
https://www.interpol.int/en/How-we-work/Notices/Red-Notices/...
> Extracts of Red Notices are published at the request of the member country concerned and where the public’s help may be needed to locate an individual or if the individual may pose a threat to public safety.
So, no, only a minority of them are made public.