The global financial
crisis has buffeted the balance sheets of Russia's legion of billionaires.
But suitcases of cash and Russian-owned luxury yachts keep arriving in this
idyllic town on the Adriatic, helping Montenegro earn the nickname
Moscow-on-the-Sea.
Among the biggest
investors is the Russian developer Vyentseslav Leibman, a young millionaire who is pressing ahead with investments of $310 million, including plans
for a 27-floor modernist hotel, luxury seaside villas, docks for the pleasure
boats of the Russian superrich and a water park for their children.
The investment might seem daring given the way the economic downturn has
hit several of his fellow wealthy Russians. But Mr. Leibman, a Muscovite who is
managing partner at Mirax Group, the company owned by the Russian billionaire
developer Sergei Polonsky, insists he can barely keep up with demand.
He said more than half of the sprawling condominiums in Mirax's new
complex - which sell for more than $10,400 per square foot and come with
outdoor marble Jacuzzis - had been sold to executives of giant Russian
companies like Gazprom, Lukoil and VTB. They paid, he said, upfront and in
cash.
Despite the financial crisis, "the money keeps coming," said Mr.
Leibman, who recently helped bring Madonna to perform in Budva to promote his
development. "And hopefully the global financial crisis will help sober up the
cost of land here, which is now more expensive than in Monaco."
Thanks in large part to wealthy Russians, Montenegro has received more
foreign investment per capita than any other country on the Continent. In
recent years, Russian investors have gobbled up land on the Montenegrin coast,
a fashionable alternative to the South of France and coastal Turkey.
Russians, including the heavily leveraged Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska,
have also made huge investments in the country's industrial sector.
In neighboring Serbia,
Gazprom, the Russian state energy monopoly, recently bought a majority stake in
the national energy company, Petroleum Industry of Serbia, for $520 million and
agreed to invest another $650 million by 2012. The deal will give Gazprom a
dominant position in Serbia's
energy market while transforming Serbia into a gateway for the
transportation of Russian gas into western Europe.
As governments across the western Balkans have turned toward the United
States and Europe - and actively seek European Union and NATO membership - the
influx of Russian capital is seen by some in Brussels and Washington as a
retaliatory move by Moscow to assert influence in a formerly Communist region
with which it has long had close ties.
Gen. Blagoje Grahovac, a senior adviser to the speaker of Montenegro's Parliament, warned in a recent
interview with the Serbian newspaper Nedeljni Telegraf that the United States,
the European Union and NATO were being "outmaneuvered" in the western Balkans.
"Whoever holds the upper hand economically will also do so politically," he
said.
The European Parliament late last year commissioned a study of Russian
investment; among its concerns is that a burgeoning property market provides an
ideal front for illegal transactions. The European Commission has repeatedly
warned of money laundering in Montenegro.
But Dmitri S. Peskov, spokesman for Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia,
dismissed the notion that Russian investment was geopolitically motivated as
"utter nonsense."
"When British people 30 years ago were investing in Spanish coastal
areas, it would never come to anyone's mind to speak about enhancing political
influence," Mr. Peskov said. "When tens or hundreds of thousands of British or
American people are investing in the Gulf countries, this is not a political
pressure. But every time when it comes to Russia or Russians, it is
immediately treated as flexing political muscle."
But the Russianization here is unmistakable. Russians can be seen and
heard everywhere: on the beaches, in clubs, in upscale restaurants and in a
recently opened Russian-language elementary school. Until recently, a billboard
at the airport in Podgorica, the capital, greeted visitors in Russian: "Come
where they like you!"
Lazar Radenovic, Budva's young deputy mayor, said Russians started to
invest here eight years ago, after the Balkan wars of the 1990s, when real
estate prices were severely depressed. Russian investment has since grown to
more than $13 billion, he said. In Budva, he noted, the influx had created a
new class of millionaires - 500 at last count - who had improved the town's tax
base and development.
Mr. Leibman said Russians were attracted to the Balkans by a cultural
connection stretching back to the 18th century. Serbia and Montenegro, he
noted, share a Slavic Orthodox identity with Russia. "When Russians come here,"
he said, "we don't feel like we have crossed over the border."
Zarko Radulovic, co-owner of Hotel Splendid - luxury penthouse suites,
swimming pools and boutiques backed by a Russian investment fund - insisted the
threat of economic colonization was exaggerated. "The perception that the
Russians have bought everything is wrong," he said. "Only 1 percent of
Montenegro is owned by foreigners."
But the European Parliament report countered that official statistics
had minimized the scale of Russian investment because many Russians invested
through third countries or by teaming up with Montenegrins.
Mr. Radulovic insisted that most businesspeople support Montenegro's
entry into the European Union, since being outside the bloc hampers business.
When he recently decided to invest $12 million for new air conditioning to make
the hotel's kitchen comply with European Union regulations, he waited two days
for a visa to travel to Belgium to buy it, an annoyance, he said, that "makes
me want to buy Russian technology instead."
Many here argue that Russian investment, paradoxically, will help
Westernize Balkan countries by aiding economic development, thereby
accelerating readiness to join the European Union and NATO.
Branimir Gvozdenovic, minister for economic development and a close ally
of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, said that Russia was Montenegro's
second-biggest foreign investor after Hungary, and that Russians accounted for
12 percent of tourists last year. "We welcome investments from more than 80
countries, so why not Russia?" he said.
Yet the relationship does appear to have a political dimension. Russia's
emergencies minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, has warned that relations between
Russia and Montenegro could be damaged if Montenegro pursued NATO membership.
Two years ago, when Mr. Putin received Mr. Djukanovic in his residence at
Sochi, Mr. Putin praised Montenegro for promoting business with Russia and
urged closer ties. In July, Mr. Putin moved to permit visa-free travel between
the two countries.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Serbia, where the pro-Western government of
President Boris Tadic has been pressing for European Union membership, some
critics argue that Russia is using pipeline politics to keep Belgrade in
Russia's sphere of influence.
In a recently announced energy deal, Gazprom agreed to make Serbia a
transit country for its South Stream pipeline, a $14 billion project that will
stretch 560 miles undersea from Russia to Europe. The project - which Gazprom
insists will forge ahead despite the global financial crisis - is a direct
challenge to Nabucco, a pipeline championed by the United States and the
European Union to bring natural gas to Europe via Central Asia, offsetting
energy dependence on Russia.
Danica Popovic, chief economist at the Center for Liberal-Democratic
Studies in Belgrade, an economic research institute, argued that economic
relations shifted fundamentally in Russia's favor after Moscow repeatedly
invoked its veto in the United Nations Security Council to prevent it from
recognizing Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia last February.
"By Moscow controlling our energy sector, we can become vassals of
Russia just like South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia," she said, noting that
attitudes toward the European Union were hardening in Serbia, even among
members of the pro-Western government, who are increasingly frustrated with the
union's conditions for membership.
Milutin Nikolic, director of Citadel, a Belgrade-based mergers and
acquisitions firm that has advised on the biggest Russian deals in Serbia, said he
did not believe the recent influx of Russian investments reflected a
coordinated Kremlin strategy.
If Moscow had influence, Mr. Nikolic contended, it was
because Serbs were still smarting over recent history, including the NATO
bombing of Serbia
in 1999 and the West's backing of Kosovo's independence. "Russia doesn't need to economically colonize Serbia," he said, "because Moscow already has serious political
influence here." | 
