Guest Thinkers — March 28, 2011

Fighting Russian Corruption, Online

By day, Aleksei N. Navalny is a lawyer in Moscow. By night, he runs a website that exposes corruption in the Russian energy sector. A friend of the people, he is making government enemies.

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Moscow lawyer Aleksei N. Navalny runs a website that dishes the dirt on questionable business practices of Russian energy companies. “A 34-year-old real estate lawyer by training, Mr. Navalny can reach as many as a million unique visitors in a day with his digital samizdat, as happened last fall with his scoop about embezzlement at Transneft, a state-run pipeline company. That scheme, presented as a cautionary tale for those tempted to invest in Russian energy stocks, described executives setting up a series of shell companies to pose as contractors for Transneft’s project to build a 3,000-mile pipeline to China.”

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

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