There is no mistaking how important Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s trade visit to Russia is, when you see the banquet that has been laid on at the Lotte Hotel in Moscow. But he is not just there to improve the already close trade relations between the two countries; the Dutch prime minister also met a critical blogger and expert on corruption.

It is an impressive trade delegation that is accompanying Prime Minister Rutte and Infrastructure Minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen; it includes 15 executives from Dutch multinationals. Most of them have been operating in Russia for many years and know how things work in the former communist country. Others have come to take a look at the Russian market.

Shortly before the banquet, the prime minister talks with four Russian human rights activists and corruption experts. One of them is a well-known blogger Aleksei Navalny, who is an outspoken critic of the Kremlin. He invariably calls United Russia, the party of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev, “the party of crooks and thieves”.

Key role for Dutch
Mr Navalny told Mr Rutte that the Netherlands could play a key role in tackling Russian corruption, which has increased substantially in recent years. Transparency International, which is also represented at the meeting says Russia has fallen to 154th place, which ranks the country alongside a number of African and Asian states.

“The Netherlands is a key country in this sense,” Mr Navalny says. “The tax regime is attractive for numerous foreign companies which have located their headquarters there. My idea is that the Netherlands should help itself, not us. The Netherlands should protect its own citizens against the export of corruption and money laundering, which unfortunately does go on.”

Huge fraud scandal
The Dutch should tackle Russian corruption with a no-tolerance policy, Mr Navalny thinks. “That would help us in the battle against corruption here in Russia. It is high time that we put an end to their comfortable life here.”

Prime Minister Rutte will also bring up human rights violations in Moscow, for instance the case of a  lawyer, Sergei Magnitski, who died in police custody in 2009 at the age of 37. He was arrested after he uncovered a huge tax fraud scandal implicating police officers and civil servants. Towards the end of his detention, he was refused essential medical care, which proved fatal.

Western countries criticised the investigation into Magnitski’s death. A few measures were taken here and there, but no-one was arrested. A number of officials involved in the death and cover-up were fired. Some have been issued a visa ban and their foreign accounts have been frozen. Prime Minister Rutte has promised to bring the case up with President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin.

Human Rights Watch
Tanja Loksjina of Human Rights Watch says she is satisfied with the meeting. “It was a very substantial chat, very extensive,” she says. “The prime minister promised to bring up the Magnitski case and press for European Court decisions to be carried out. That is exactly what we discussed behind closed doors. And of course we hope this will happen. I also took part in the last meeting [with Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende in 2007, ed.]. I think eight representatives from NGOs were invited to say a few words for a couple of minutes. That was a series of monologues. This time it was a real conversation, an exchange of views.”

The Dutch prime minister has never met Prime Minister Putin before, but he did see President Medvedev once at the OSCE summit in Kazakhstan at the end of last year. After the meeting, Prime Minister Rutte flies on to St. Petersburg, where he will visit a storm surge barrier in the Gulf of Finland, built with the help of Dutch expertise. It is his second visit to Russia; the prime minister came to Russia as a student when it was still part of the Soviet Union in 1989.

(nc/rk)