Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, February 22, 2013

Scandal or politics?

What I want to know is whether a Putin loyalist would be treated this way. Or is Vladimir Pekhtin a Putin loyalist?

Russian Parliament Ethics Chief Steps Aside Over Reports of Undisclosed Properties

The chairman of the ethics committee in Russia’s lower house of Parliament temporarily relinquished his authority on Wednesday after bloggers posted a raft of documents on the Internet showing him as the owner of expensive real estate, including a luxury oceanfront apartment in South Beach, part of Miami Beach, as well as valuable property in Russia that he did not list on required disclosure forms.

Pekhtin

The chairman, Vladimir A. Pekhtin, insisted in a televised statement that he had done nothing wrong, and that his voluntary surrender of authority over the ethics panel would last only for the duration of an investigation that he said would clear him.

But the documents, some of them easily available public property records, showed Mr. Pekhtin’s name on the deeds of at least three properties in Florida, including the South Beach apartment bought last year for nearly $1.3 million…