It seems that one way or another there is always an obstacle to President Medvedev’s ostensible aim of reducing graft and obviating legal nihilism.  An article in today’s Moscow Times showcases this precise kind of obstacle.  Anastasia Kornya reports that courts have found a loophole to avoid obeying the new law that prohibits business people from being arrested for economic crimes: judges are quite simply redefining the nature of an economic crime.  The law, which was passed in April, was backed by Medvedev and seemed a presidential response of sorts towards the shocking conditions under which corporate lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and realtor Vera Trifonova died whilst being held in pretrial detention on economic charges.  If the article is to be believed however, this law is far from solving the problem:

“Legislation prohibiting the arrest of businessmen won’t help many of them, as courts are refusing to acknowledge that some suspects were engaged in entrepreneurial activity.

Vedomosti has obtained a copy of the Tverskoi District Court’s decision extending the arrest of Alexander Volkov, director of Eurasia Logistics, who was accused of fraud and property laundering, as well as document forgery committed as part of an organized group. The Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee said that in 2006-08, Eurasia helped Mukhtar Ablyazov, former head of BTA-Bank, take out loans he never intended to return”.