During President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Silicon Valley earlier this year to pitch Russia as the next hotbed of technological innovation, the industry responded with guarded interest. Well yes, sure, that sounds great, but what are you going to do to protect my investment? How will I not become the next Bill Browder?

Unfortunately there are very few comforting answers to these questions. The inability of Russia’s vulnerable judiciary to independently administer justice – either in private business matters or in matters involving interests of the people who rule the country – has long been the Achilles’ heel of the country’s development.

The phenomenon is driven by political subversion of the judiciary which, in turn, leads to the deep corruption within the judicial bureaucracy, which President Medvedev himself has singled out as the primary obstacle. Writing recently in the Moscow Times, economists Aleh Tsyvinski and Sergei Guriev argued that the re-nationalizations which have taken place since 2004 have resulted in the creation of overweight state-owned corporations, which decrease the incentives for the development of institutions capable of protecting rule of law. “Fast and sustainable economic growth requires the rule of law; accountable, meritocratic and noncorrupt bureaucrats; protection of property rights; contract enforcement; and competitive markets,” Tsyvinski and Guriev argue. “Such institutions are difficult to build in every society. In Russia, the task is especially problematic, because the ruling elite’s interests run counter to undertaking it.“