Ramzan's racers (weekly review) By Vadim Borshchev, special to Prague Watchdog
Ramzan Kadyrov’s horses won races at Pyatigorsk last Saturday. Thus read the official communiqué that was issued at the weekend by the press service of the President and Government of the Republic of Chechnya and distributed by all the republic’s media. In addition, footage of the racing was shown on Chechen TV for a couple of days.
Despite the rampant corruption in Russia, it is not done among officials to speak openly about the extent of their personal wealth, even if it was accumulated before they entered the service of the state. On the one hand, the ostentatious display of luxury provokes social protest. Most people are already convinced that the men in power steal millions and billions. Why give them any more backing for those accusations? For another, at the top of government there is a sort of "gentlemen's agreement" that defines the code of conduct for civil servants. You may steal, but only as long as it is done in secret.
Kadyrov does not just break the rules – he has managed to build an entire Byzantium on government territory. Racehorses are a very expensive hobby. The prices of elite thoroughbreds range from hundreds of thousands of dollars well into the millions. There is also the fact that Kadyrov has long felt constricted by the racecourses of Russia. As it came to light after the assassination attempt on Sulim Yamadayev, he has his own stables in Dubai. The cost of keeping the horses there is also doubtless not a modest sum.
But the list of Kadyrov’s hobbies does not end with horses. Photographs of the cars that belong to him have long been circulating on the Internet. The Chechen President’s personal garage boasts a Lamborghini Reventon worth over a million euros (only twenty have ever been made), exclusive models of a slightly less extravagant kind (with prices starting at several hundred thousand dollars), and of course the countless Porsche Cayennes, Mercedes and Lexuses, of which in his motorcade there are about fifty.
The register of Kadyrov’s excesses also includes a private zoo, residential properties that resemble castles, and a passion for giving expensive presents. The cars and personal cash gifts lavished upon Chechnya soccer players, captains of industry, senior law enforcers and ordinary citizens cannot be counted. A separate category of gift recipients is occupied by exalted guests. The Moscow hair stylist Sergei Zverev was given watches worth about a hundred thousand dollars. There is already a special tradition associated with the Chechen leader’s name: at informal events – birthdays, weddings, private parties – Kadyrov and his inner circle shower the guests with banknotes, covering the floors with tens and even hundreds of thousands of rubles.
Wicked tongues say that the cost of the high-class building materials for the Akhmat Kadyrov Mosque which stands in the centre of Grozny exceeded all conceivable limits. But there are no precise figures for the budgets of the construction industry in Chechnya, because it is run on a highly complicated and confusing system of financing that does not permit the tracking of the amounts that are spent. And in any case, no one makes much effort to track them. Kadyrov has been given carte blanche not just for violence against his opponents but also for a stupid, offensive luxury which has become a hallmark of his style of government.
Other items of expenditure are beauty contests, high-flown academic and religious conferences, and soccer. Today, Grozny is trying to become the centre of the universe by overtaking the other regions of Russia in the number of public forums it hosts.
Back in the distant 1990s, before the first Chechen war, the republic experienced a boom in vozdushniki – counterfeit vouchers, which made thousands of people fabulously rich. Kadyrov’s current habits display features of the special behaviour pattern that emerged during those boom years. The same violence, the same extravagant spending, the construction fever, when absurd and cheap-looking castles began to be built throughout Chechnya, the same desire to make an ostentatious show of wealth.
The question of where Kadyrov actually gets the vast amounts of money he spends with a truly crass bravado is one that no one even asks. Before fate elevated him to the number one post in the republic, he was a rank-and-file police official. He led his father’s bodyguard, but did not engage in business like the president of neighbouring Kabardino-Balkaria, Arsen Kanokov. Kadyrov is simply able to have money and to spread it around like garbage. That is a kind of axiom.
And, as we return to the news with which this weekly review began, it should be borne in mind that news is a genre with laws of its own. News is the reporting of socially significant events that reflect the essence of the processes that are taking place in society. It goes without saying that the winning of horse races can be seen as a sporting achievement by this or that region of the federation. But only if the horses belong to sports associations which represent that region in the contest. If the horses are privately owned, they bring glory first and foremost to their owner.
That statement is only true, however, of a society in which the ruler has the status of a manager. Where the principle of L’état, c’est moi prevails, the subjects are permitted to experience their ruler’s personal joys and sorrows as their own.
Photo: zhizn.ru. (Translation by DM) (P,DM)
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