Anonymous ID: 9de83c June 30, 2019, 9:03 p.m. No.6886556   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6568

You should know about the Bitkovs — a strange and terrible case.

The Bitkovs are a family of four: Igor and Irina and their children, Anastasia and Vladimir. They started out in Russia — or rather, three of them did. Vladimir was born here in Guatemala.

 

Igor, Irina, and their daughter were forced to flee Russia, as so many are. They came to Guatemala to start a new life. They are now in prison here. Igor is in a men’s facility and his wife and daughter are in a women’s facility, less than half a mile away. They are forbidden to see one another. That is, Igor may not see Irina and Anastasia, and vice versa.

 

Vladimir, age six, is in the care of guardians (loving, selfless ones). “If I were not a child, I would be in prison too,” he says. He would rather be. He would like to be with his family, free or not. He speaks of hiding in their bedsheets.

 

According to the family and its supporters, the Bitkovs are the victims of a vengeful Russian state, working in curious partnership with Guatemalan authorities and a U.N. agency. Their case is all over Russia’s state media, as the Kremlin cackles at their plight. In America, Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal has written about them repeatedly. Members of Congress are interested in holding hearings.

 

On April 27, there will be a hearing before the U.S. Helsinki Commission, in Washington.

 

The Bitkov family merits a book, rather than an article such as mine. They could be a movie, too — harrowing, Kafkaesque. I will tell their story in brief.

 

Igor grew up in Novodvinsk, a town in Arkhangelsk Oblast, in northwest Russia. His parents were engineers, working in a pulp and paper mill. His father was the Communist Party representative in the mill. (These were Soviet times, I should note.) Irina grew up in the city of Arkhangelsk, about 15 miles from Novodvinsk. Her father was a systems engineer, and her mother worked in a pharmacy.

 

Neither family had much money, but they got by.

 

Igor and Irina met in 1989, when Irina was visiting Novodvinsk. (Irina remembers the day precisely: September 1.) Irina and a friend were sitting on a stoop. A guy next door, Igor, was taking out the garbage. He said to Irina, “You’re not from here. I know all the pretty girls in this town, and I’ve never seen you before.” They were married nine months later. Igor was 21 and Irina 20. They are now in their late 40s.

 

Apparently, they are natural entrepreneurs. By dint of their own efforts and talents, starting from nothing, they built a splendid company: NWTC, for “North West Timber Company.” They dealt in pulp and paper. They pioneered clean technology, which was very important to Igor. “In my hometown, many people died from consequences of dirty technology.”

 

The Bitkovs were also philanthropists, funding churches and orphanages, etc. PricewaterhouseCoopers, among others, honored them for their achievements.

 

As their company grew, they borrowed money from three state banks: VTB, Sberbank, and Gazprombank. Sberbank would value NWTC at $428 million. Igor says it should have been more like $450 million, but let’s not split hairs.

 

With success came trouble — because the Kremlin and its oligarchs wanted in on the action. A leader of Sberbank wanted to buy 51 percent of the company. Putin’s party — United Russia — wanted Irina to be one of its regional chiefs. An association of businessmen, chaired by the VTB honcho, wanted her to join. (That would have entailed hefty “dues” payments from the Bitkovs.) On it went.

 

And the Bitkovs said no. Why? “Why did you not play ball, like everyone else?” I ask. “Principle,” says Igor. “I could have paid, no problem — but I didn’t want to. We did not want to play their game; we wanted to play ours.” Irina explains, “There is no middle way in Russia.” Either you’re in or you’re out. You can’t finesse the system. If you go along with the oligarchs, even a little, they will own you. Your hands are either clean or dirty. You can’t be a little bit pregnant. There is no middle way.

 

“I thought we could remain independent,” says Irina. “We were doing so much good for society. I thought that would be enough. I did not realize that not working with the government would be fatal to us.”

 

Putin’s Russia, in short, is a mafia state. The Bitkovs refused to pay protection.

 

https:

//www.google.com/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/bitkov-family-ordeal-fled-russia-imprisoned-in-guatemala/amp/

Anonymous ID: 9de83c June 30, 2019, 9:05 p.m. No.6886568   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>6886556

https:

//www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/guatemala-russia-and-the-bitkovs-1530477494

 

July 1, 2018 4:38 pm ET

It’s been two months since Guatemala’s Constitutional Court cleared a Russian migrant family of all criminal charges related to their use of illegally issued documents. The April 25 high-court exoneration of Igor Bitkov, his wife, Irina, and their daughter, Anastasia, was widely heralded, including in this newspaper.

 

Yet the Bitkovs still aren’t free.