Russian police raid outspoken environmental group

Alexander Osipovich Yahoo News 29 Jan 10;

MOSCOW (AFP) – Police raided a Russian environmental group that had challenged Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's decision to reopen a paper mill on Siberia's pristine Lake Baikal, officials and activists said on Friday.

Police in the Siberian city of Irkutsk said they had searched the offices of Baikal Environmental Wave on Thursday and confiscated computers to check for pirated software.

But the group linked the raid to its criticism of the government's decision to allow the reopening of the Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill, which is owned by tycoon Oleg Deripaska and has been closed since 2008.

Environmentalists fear the Soviet-built paper mill will pollute Lake Baikal, a huge crescent-shaped body of water famed for its unique flora and fauna. It is the world's deepest freshwater lake.

"We are certain this was connected to our work on the pulp and paper mill," Igor Ogorodnikov, an activist with Baikal Environmental Wave, told AFP.

Four officers, including two from the anti-extremism branch of the Irkutsk police, came to the group's offices saying they had received a complaint about unlicensed software on its computers, Ogorodnikov said.

They seized all 12 of the group's computers and its web server, which has "paralyzed" its work, he said. Police told the group they would keep the computers for a month to check if the software was licensed.

They also threatened to prosecute the group for interfering with the search, during which the officers from the anti-extremism branch demanded information about the group's politics, Ogorodnikov said.

"They kept asking questions like, 'Are you against the government?' We think they were trying to provoke us," he said.

Irkutsk police confirmed in a statement on Friday that the raid had taken place but denied it was politically motivated.

The police force "rejects reports that the inspection was linked to Baikal Environment Wave's activities, stressing that officers were dispatched only in reaction to possible violations of intellectual property rights," it said.

The use of pirated software is widespread in Russia and there have been allegations in the past that police use charges of using unlicensed software to hinder the work of Kremlin critics.

Pirated movies, CDs and computer programmes are sold openly in many cities and the Business Software Alliance, an international industry group, estimated last year that 68 percent of software on Russia's computers was unlicensed.

The Russian branches of WWF and Greenpeace said in a joint statement that they considered Thursday's raid "an attempt to pressure" Baikal Environmental Wave.

The raid on the group came as the Russian government faced fierce criticism for a decree, signed by Putin and published last week, allowing the reopening of the Baikalsk paper mill.

The decree came after a surprise stunt last summer where Putin descended to the bottom of Lake Baikal in a mini-submarine and emerged to declare it "ecologically clean."

Environmentalists have long fought for the paper mill, which dates back to the 1960s, to be shut down.

In recent years the government required the mill to install a closed-water system to mitigate waste leakage into the lake, but the new requirements made the enterprise unprofitable, and it closed in October 2008.

The government has defended Putin's decision, arguing that the mill is a crucial employer in Baikalsk, a town of 17,000.

Russia has struggled to prevent job losses amid the global economic crisis, especially in industrial towns dominated by inefficient Soviet-built factories.

Deripaska, a metals tycoon who was Russia's richest man before losing much of his wealth to the economic crisis, owns 51 percent of the paper mill through his Basic Element holding company. The state owns the other 49 percent.