Yelena Baturina is in trouble. The halcyon days of bulldozing through Moscow, overseeing Inteko’s lucrative development contracts, apparently eased along by her husband, then mayor Yury Luzkhov, are over: they ended with his fall from grace.  Baturina has plummeted in the rankings of the rich, is now the object of a criminal investigation over $440 million of allegedly embezzled money, and has fallen victim to the familiar saga of office raids by armed police officers.  Sergei Matyunin in the Moscow Times argues the case that Baturina, who in tandem with her husband, were seen by some as unashamedly profiteering from of an unjust use of power, may, in fact, be being victimized.  He explains why:

What we have had in effect is a taxpayer-subsidized construction industry. Privileged companies take the fruits, do not invest their own money and shift the risks onto the public. This is the real scandal. Neither Baturina’s company nor the bank nor the equity fund has made any substantial contributions into the project. If the project fails, none of them would have serious losses. If it succeeds, they would make away with generous profits.