The Investment Gulag

David Lee Smith at Motley Fool wonders when Western investment in Russia will grind to halt. Given my experience, I have yet to see the limit to investor’s risk threshold … the institutions seem bent on reaching a total collapse before learning any lessons.

Is Russia Becoming an Investment Gulag? By David Lee Smith With all that’s occurring in Russia these days, I’m wondering how long it’ll be before Western investment in that nation grinds to a halt. The Russian military’s incursion of the past week into Georgia is part of the picture, but there are a couple of similar — albeit somewhat less widely reported — bits of industrial skullduggery that bode almost as ill for Russia’s ability to continue to function as a member of the modern world community. One, the TNK-BP affair that I’ve told you about in the past, has Russian authorities, along with a trio of the country’s billionaires, playing more than hardball in a partnership with oil giant BP (NYSE: BP). Just last week a Russian court banned the partnership’s CEO — who already had been forced from Russia following a government refusal to grant him a new work visa — from holding executive office there for two years. The executive, Robert Dudley, has been trying since last month to run the partnership’s business from an unknown European location. It’ll be a neat trick if he can continue to pull it off.

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