| If you noticed, no one is ever extradited to Russia now. Moreover, the Russian state loses any personal case in any court outside Russia - be it the story of the oligarchs Gusinsky and Berezovsky, the Ichkerian emissary Akhmed Zakayev, or unknown citizens. This is a kind of punishment for the government’s use of justice as an applied political tool.
The latest high-profile story of Russia’s failure to extradite the desired potential criminal was the decision of the Swiss Federal Office of Justice to extradite former Minister of Atomic Energy Evgeny Adamov to the United States. Russian officials reacted to this decision completely inadequately. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted an official statement on the website in which it accused the Swiss justice of being politicized (exactly from the series “from a sore head to a sound one”, because a more politicized justice than the Russian one still needs to be looked for). And Minister of Justice Chaika said that Russia had every legal basis to count on Adamov’s extradition to Moscow. This is, to put it mildly, not true. Even if the highest court of Switzerland nevertheless upholds the lawyers’ appeal and decides to hand Adamov over to Russia, this decision will be an exclusively political gesture, but not an act of triumph of the letter and spirit of the law.
The story of Evgeny Adamov is the quintessence of the relationship between the “first”, executive, Russian power and the “third”, judicial power. A classic case of the use of justice in the modern history of Russia for applied political purposes.
The parliamentary opposition, which was still in the Duma of the previous convocation, initiated the creation of a commission that would study the accusations of abuse of official position, which were actively circulated by the American press, against Minister Yevgeny Adamov. For many months before the creation of the commission, the Western press wrote about the Russian minister’s bank accounts in foreign banks of dubious origin. The Kremlin reacted to these accusations by a major government official inside and outside the country in the spirit of a hardware scam - behind the scenes, they agreed on the quiet resignation of the minister, in return turning a blind eye to the criminal nature of his actions, if any actually took place.
On December 15, 2001 (Minister Adamov was fired in March of the same year), Deputy Prosecutor General Yuri Biryukov, at a plenary meeting of the State Duma, reporting to that same parliamentary commission, reported: Russian law enforcement agencies have no complaints against citizen Adamov and there is no criminal case against him. for what. Three and a half years have passed since then, during which we have not heard anything about the fate of the former minister. He was not left under recognizance not to leave the place, since there was no criminal case. He was not prohibited from leaving the country as a bearer of state secrets. At the time when Mr. Adamov was detained in Switzerland, according to Russian, international, whatever laws you want, he remained an ordinary free citizen of Russia. This means he had every right to visit his daughter in Switzerland.
As soon as Mr. Adamov was detained at the request of US law enforcement agencies, our Prosecutor General's Office, having clearly received political instructions, immediately changed its point of view on the commercial activities of the former official. A criminal case immediately appeared against Adamov in Russia, the reasoning part of which has not yet been properly announced, but the essence is very clear - so that he, the bearer of our great atomic secrets, does not fall into the hands of “enemy” America. After the American request for the extradition of Adamov, Russia hastily prepared its own.
After all this, what sane person would challenge the logic of the Swiss Federal Office of Justice, which reasoned: America can extradite Adamov to Russia after a trial, but Russia will never extradite Adamov to America.
In Russia, the emergence or, conversely, the dragging out of criminal cases on the basis of political orders and behind-the-scenes agreements has so far given the result the authorities need. But that part of the world that recognizes the basic democratic principle of separation of powers and universal equality before the law naturally treats our justice system accordingly. And he doesn’t give anyone away. Semyon Novoprudsky
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