I experienced Russian corruption firsthand — and Trump is importing KGB thuggery

Before I became a trial lawyer, I was corporate. Studying legal systems abroad morphed into drafting foreign license agreements, and in the late 90s, I negotiated across the table from Russian oligarchs. These were men who, through connections with the recently-dissolved Russian state, came into new money when Soviet apparatchiks divvied up Russia’s wealth and natural resources for themselves.

Meet Boris, a walking Russian stereotype

In Chicago, I was a corporate in-house lawyer, and Boris was my client’s Russian trademark licensee. He was also the wealthiest kleptocrat in my rolodex. (Under 40? Rolodex: a wheel of small index cards with names, addresses, phone and fax numbers.) A walking stereotype, Boris self-described as a corporate tycoon, complete with pinky ring, real fur, and pomade ponytail. Convinced that rudeness demonstrated power, he walked into our meetings with a lit cigar, and used the coffee saucer as an ashtray.

Boris lived and worked in Moscow but came to the US frequently. He often came to my office to execute updated contracts, because he kept changing the name of his Russian company (to evade an asset search by his wife’s US divorce lawyer, I suspected). The deception fit, but I was paid to negotiate license agreements, not moralize.

Our mutually-profitable relationship continued for several years, while Boris imported my client’s beverage base, mixed it with water and other ingredients, and distributed it throughout Russia under my client’s trademark. After a few good years, however, Boris decided he’d spent enough money marketing a trademark that belonged to a US company. He decided that he should own my client’s trademark, duly registered in the US, Russia, China, and throughout the industrialized world, for himself.

Moscow was, and is, a dangerous place

When I went to Moscow, I traveled with a body guard. I stayed at the Radisson-Slavjanskaya Hotel because it was walking distance to the Stalin-era Russian subway, where elderly women peddled glasses of vodka and borscht, and because it reliably served familiar food.

During one of my trips, an American businessman who was staying in--and who had founded--that very hotel, was gunned down. The LA Times reported that American Paul Tatum helped develop the Radisson-Slavjanskaya Hotel into one of the first Western-style hotels in Moscow. Tatum saw newly capitalist Russia as an entrepreneur’s heaven. But just before he was murdered, Tatum had begun telling anyone who would listen that he was “defending his share in the hotel against unscrupulous executives, the Chechen Mafia, and a Russian business culture that wouldn’t play fair.”

‘Wouldn’t play fair’ was an understatement. Tatum, according to reports, understood that murder is “a corporate strategy in Moscow.” As I and my corporate client—who paid for my bodyguard— knew, hundreds of business executives are killed annually in Mafia-style hits throughout Russia. Tatum, however, gambled that assassins-for-hire “would never dare kill a prominent American. He even stopped wearing his bullet-proof vest.” As Moscow police spokesman Yuri Tatarinov put it later, Tatum “tried to act in Moscow like he would act in the States or any other civilized country.” He no doubt remembered where he was when 11 bullets pierced his skull.

Russian officials openly demanded bribes, which Trump has now legalized

When Boris tried to steal my client’s trademark, worth millions by then, I met with officials at Rospatent, the Russian Patent and Trademark Office. Boris sat across the table, looking bored with no cigar, as Rospatent officials told me outright that my client was at a legal disadvantage in the Boris challenge. Their offense, I asked? Failure to grease their palms.

American companies were prohibited under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act from paying bribes, and in pre-Trump years, federal law mattered. So my client and I set in for protracted litigation. I hired Baker and McKenzie in Moscow, closed following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, to conduct extensive market surveys throughout Russia to defeat Boris’ specious “geographically misdescriptive trademark” claim. Several years and several million dollars later, we won.

Donald Trump, who always reminded me of Boris, acting like a successful bully on The Apprentice, has now suspended the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Openly embracing corruption and bribery, Trump has thereby made doing business abroad much more expensive, and much more dangerous.

Modeling the strength of an AK-15 wielding mob boss, Trump has also embraced Putin, a murderous thug trained by the KGB, in his quest to normalize Russian-style thuggery. Getting rid of bribery laws was one of Trump’s priorities in his first term but Rex Tillerson, his first secretary of state, refused. Today there are no Rex Tillersons in Trump’s cabinet, only unqualified lackeys who will do anything for power, and voila! Foreign bribery is now legal.

Trump/Musk/Vance are importing KGB thuggery

Trump’s KGB-inspired thuggery aligns perfectly with Elon Musk campaigning on behalf of Germany’s Nazi party, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Last week, Vice President JD Vance, who still refuses to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election, had the unmitigated gall to lecture European leaders in Munich about how they had abandoned “the values of democracy” by excluding Germany’s Nazi party from government.

Pundits can stop wondering where Trump’s allegiance lies; now we know, as Trump/Musk/Vance officially embrace America’s nemesis, Vladimir Putin. Trump is trying to gaslight the world by parroting Putin’s absurd claim that Ukraine started the war. Ukraine’s President Zelensky, who has lost over 100,000 people to Putin’s brutal invasion, correctly observed that Trump exists in a “web of disinformation.” He might have added, “woven by Putin and Elon Musk on X.” Republicans in Congress who were formerly hawks against Moscow have remained shamefully silent in the face of Trump’s villainy, fearing Musk will primary them.

For anyone wondering what the connection is between Trump, Musk, Putin and the AfD, it is all of a piece: Trump/Vance/Musk are empowering far-right nationalists in Europe in an effort to divide European democracies, just as Trump/Putin are dividing the US. At their core, Trump/Musk embrace Putin because he stands for ruthless oligarchy and defeat of the only thing that challenges Trump: the rule of law. As I see it, it is treason.

I, for one, would not do business in Russia today. I hope Boris (not his real name) doesn’t see this, but it really doesn’t matter, because Trump has already spread Putin’s mob-boss mentality throughout America’s boardrooms, hotels, and streets. Plus, Musk already knows my address.

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Sabrina Haake is a 25 year trial lawyer specializing in 1^st and 14^th A defense.Her columns are published in the Chicago Tribune, Salon,Raw Story,Out South Florida, Windy City Times, MSN, Alternet, and Smart News. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.