Does Medvedev really believe in the rule of law? The fate of TNK-BP is the test
Is President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia — who looks and sounds like a liberal-leaning modern technocrat — really his own man, or is he merely the stooge of his predecessor, the sinister, warmongering Vladimir Putin? The mad situation engulfing BP’s Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, is surely the test of this question. Its BP-appointed chief executive, Robert Dudley, has met such hostility from the gang of oligarchs who are BP’s partners in the company that he is now trying to run it by email from a secret address somewhere in eastern Europe. The oligarchs, led by the combative multibillionaire Mikhail Fridman, claim BP has managed TNK-BP (which accounts for a quarter of total BP oil production) more like a subsidiary than an independent venture, refusing to let it pursue opportunities where it might cross other BP interests. In consequence, they say, TNK-BP has underperformed Russian rivals such as Lukoil.
They may have a genuine case, or they may just be trying to run BP out of town in the lawless Russian cowboy-capitalist style usually associated with the Yeltsin era. But what is outrageous is the way in which various arms of the Russian state, including the visa authorities, have been deployed to make life as uncomfortable as possible for BP’s expatriate managers, to the extent that BP is now close to losing any effective control of its massive investment. The Kremlin has done nothing to indicate disapproval of all this — even though Putin gave his public blessing to BP’s participation in the original venture in 2003, and neither Fridman nor his fellow investors, Viktor Vekselberg and Leonard Blavatnik, are known as Kremlin favourites.
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