In many modern democracies, the public scandal has become the bread and butter of the system – whether it is a New York governor’s peccadilloes, a bribery investigation of one of Germany’s largest companies, or even high society Brits providing false testimony for Italian ex-presidents. Scandals provide a constant reminder that mechanisms of accountability are in place and functioning, able to snare down the most powerful people and satisfy the public outrage over wrongdoing. Writing in the Moscow Times, columnist Yulia Latynina takes issue with the fact that Russia has lost almost all sense of the public scandal because of its muzzled media – we no longer hear about the various violations, shocking surprises, and odious conduct of any high-ranking official – although this same conduct has continued and deepened from the Yeltsin presidency to the Putin era. Specifically, Yulia points to the case of Anatoly Chubais accepting a $90,000 “book advance” from a publishing company belonging to Vladimir Potanin’s Oneksimbank shortly before the bank won 25 percent of Svyazinvest’s shares in a privatization auction – when Chubais was caught, he was forced by media pressure and public outrage to resign from his post.