Putin’s Monte Carlo mystery, secret money and swanky real estate | Hacker News Reader

Putin’s Monte Carlo mystery, secret money and swanky real estate

washingtonpost.com

30 pointsericdanielski12 comments

So Putin had a child with a mistress and set her up financially. This seems pretty standard for anyone with significant wealth and/or power. I am pretty sure he is responsible for way worse atrocities than this. Further, haven't we known about the oligarchs of Russia for some time now? I don't think this is really exposing any new or unexpected behavior from Putin. This article reads more like a National Enquirer with extra details than some real expose. I almost don't really understand what the point of the article is. It certainly isn't anything that would lead the Russian people to lose faith in him. I guess you could say that it shows he doesn't follow the same rules that the Russian people are expected to follow, but I'm pretty sure they know that too.

There's a weird view that once you've told people about bad behavior once (and in the general case) then somehow you no longer need to share further and more specific evidence of bad behavior because it's redundant or something.

However this view is both wrong and counterproductive if the goal is to actually reduce/prevent such behavior. In the real world, a lot of people aren't aware of even the general case -- they have limited attention and so while you may know that Russian oligarchs hide their money in real estate, someone who is less news-savvy may not realize it. Moreover even people who understand the general problem (Oligarchs stashing national wealth into real estate in democratic countries), they may not understand the specifics of how this is done and our laws are bent and abused -- by the oligarchs and moneyed interests in our own countries.

In general I think the news agencies are correct to recognize that there is important news here, and that these specific new details are important and relevant to ongoing attempts to solve these problems. Moreover, I think that even in cases where the news is entirely "redundant" (e.g., "powerful criminals continue to behave in a criminal manner") it's extremely important to put a spotlight on the behavior from time to time just so that politicians and citizens are aware that it's ongoing and are motivated to perhaps actually do something about it (should they be interested in doing so.)

I don't know why I'm writing this absurdly-long comment in response to a random downvoted complaint, but I see this "what's new here?!" response pattern quite frequently on HN and I think that pattern of thinking can be problematic; I wish I would see less of it. If you're not interested in an article, by all means scroll on.

> It certainly isn't anything that would lead the Russian people to lose faith in him.

Well you can't say that. Attacking a male leader because he has sex more often (or with partners which are more attractive) than his subordinates is one of the oldest tool that people who are vying for that spot try in order to dethrone the person who is currently occupying it.

Sooner or later it will work.

i would think that the fact that they've got evidence rather than just gossip to a crime is actually newsworthy.

Besides Putin the papers reveal also the entire network of helpers - companies and other puppets. On those the revelations will be more striking, I reckon. This kind of business thrives by staying in the shadows so the more light the better chances to work against them.

Washington Post and wall street journal both require subscription to read their stories. Assuming that most HN readers don't have them, how do these stories get voted up to the front page?

https://archive.is/pdjiN

I think many do have subscriptions and support good journalism.

Otherwise archive.is is your friend.

If you disable JavaScript for washingtonpost.com you can read all of their articles. The only thing is that the images don't fully load (they remain blurry)

I subscribe. I will "gift" this article.

https://wapo.st/3uHFEzI

Keep hitting that Reader Mode button

By title? Possibly people upvote it in the hope that someone will publish an archive link.

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