Joe Nocera of the New York Times has followed up last week’s op-ed on how the Khodorkovsky trial typifies legal nihilism in Russia, with an equally damning piece on the collapsed IPO of Moscow’s privately owned Domodedovo airport, which Nocera claims is far more to do with an unashamed abuse of power than ‘unfavorable‘ market conditions.  Russia’s vaunted spate of IPOs has hit a fair few hurdles.  Nocera argues that given the investment climate in Russia, this is no major surprise.  He explains:

In mid-May, days before the airport announced its plans to go public, the prosecutor general lowered the boom. His report concluded that the airport’s offshore ownership structure was “unacceptable,” because it allowed Domodedovo, as he put it, “to hide the real owners and those making the management decisions at the airport.”