#26 | January 14 - 28, 1998  

by Mark Ames

When I lived in a communal apartment in my first year in Moscow, my neighbor came to me once with a distressed look on his face. We rarely talked except for the usual pleasantries. But that day, he'd heard something that shocked him.

"Are there bad Americans?" he asked, with a hurt look on his cragged, alcoholic face.

I laughed and asked why.

"My best friend and a few others were just swindled by an American who collected money from them, saying he was going to send their children to America to learn English. He took their money and disappeared. I thought only Russians did these things. Is it common with Americans?"

This was 1994, the beginning of the end of Russia's infatuation with the alleged Western ethic. And it's no one's fault but our own.

For incoming expat businessmen, this country is like a giant horror house: the proverbial door creaks open ever so slowly at Sheremetyevo, a terrifying smell and sight greets you, then suddenly, from the depths comes a voice-a squeaky American voice-warning you, "Get out of Russia... GET OUT!!! M-m-m-ha-ha-ha!" It's not just the corruption, the Mafia, the laws, or the possibility that you'll get turned into human confetti by AK-totin competitors. The main thing everyone warns foreigners about is that, when it comes to business, you can never trust a Russian. Just read any issue of the Moscow Times business pages: have they ever once insinuated that a joint venture dispute was the fault of the Westerners? I'll offer a free eXile T-shirt to anyone who can show me such an article.

From my experience, Russian untrustworthiness serves as a patsy to throw you off the scent of the real threat to anyone doing business here. You're warned in-advance about Russians, so you're on your guard. But there is a far more savage creature hiding behind the cloak of Russian amorality, and that is the eXpat huckster.

A majority of eXpats, after just a few months here, start to play what they think is "the game." No one takes a contract seriously? Fine, then I won't take contracts seriously either. Run up debts and tell my creditors to screw off, just like the government does? Why not, no one will touch me. Steal assets at cut-rate prices by bribing the right people? Hey, if finance ministers and oligarchs can do it, why not me! Insider deals? My name is Jonathan, and you can count me in!

I have a proposal for lawmakers back home. Any eXpat who has spent more than six months here should undergo rigorous psychological and moral examinations when he returns home. A council of priests, rabbis and town elders should have the right to deport any eXpat deemed to be morally unfit for life in his or her home country. If an eXpat has spent more than 18 months here, he should be locked up in a re-education camp in North Dakota, and held there for a period of no less than six months while authorities examine and re-assimilate him, using brutal methods if necessary. If he has been here longer than 18 months, than he should be treated like the Ebola virus: as he crosses the border, a platoon of armed men in plastic space suits should roughly detain him, strip him of his citizenship, and deport him.

Last week, Masha and I went to visit a deadbeat client, a certain Mister Mufid, who owns the Sheherazde restaurant. He's also in the car importing business, so he may ram a cap up my ass for writing about him... if they find my limbless torso bobbing in a bloodied icehole in the Oka, then please, reader, do your Christian deed and burn Sheherazde to the ground.

We'd signed a contract with Sheherazde about four months back. Week after week, they kept coming up with reasons why they weren't paying us. And each week, we foolishly trusted Mr. Mufid.

Finally, I went with our own Masha to surprise Mr. Mufid at his restaurant/auto parts store at the end of December. We stopped him right in front of his employees and customers and confronted him with the invoices, asking when he'd planned to pay us. He promised to pay the following Monday, but we were persistent-we knew he was full of it. He then brought us down into the unlit restaurant, using candles to light the basement... it was a cheap attempt to frighten us. When we didn't budge, he gave up all pretence and told us that he believed the bill was "our fault" and not "his fault." There was nothing we could do, short of resorting to methods that no eXpat should get involved in, at least not over a thousand dollars. Sorry, bub.

I got that queasy feeling which reminded me of the worst eXpat villain of all here, the pair of British slimebags who run Quasar. We have a contract with them, signed by their director at the behest of general manager Guy Barlow. When Quasar first started, they placed ad after ad in our paper. Each ad was carefully designed based on material which was sent and approved personally by Barlow and then-marketing manager Rob Kelley (and that's no blarney). After a few issues, Barlow tried to back out of the contract. It was incredible: here was an eXpat, a citizen of the allegedly civilized West, doing things according to the alleged rules of "the game": sorry, we don't need your contract anymore. Fuck you.

It always sucks hitting up a deadbeat. You feel you're confronting the dull mass of amorality itself-in this instance incarnated in the sweaty, unpleasant, wart-covered form of Guy Barlow. Like Mr. Mufid, he avoided our calls, so we cased Quesar and jumped him with copies of invoices. Finally he agreed to begin making payments. No payments came. We met again, this time with his accountant, and agreed to a schedule. But as we found out later, the minute we walked out, Barlow told the accountant to disregard everything he'd promised us. Nice fucking guy.

It's not like all eXpats are swindlers. We have many other clients, both expats and Russians, who are professional, honor their contracts, and lodge legitimate complaints about our nauseating pictures in Death Porn...But the greatest East Bloc myth of the 90s-that Westerners are inherently more ethical than Russians-is dying a hard, bitter death, thanks to people like Barlow.

Perhaps if you go to Quasar and you see that lying jerk, or his nerd sidekick Marty, you'll remember that you're patronizing the low end of the eXpat community, spineless twerps who only needed to find the right environment in order to let their true slippery characters shine in all their glory. We know that we'll never see that money-and because of Russia's tax system, we had to pay taxes on those ads anyway. So thanks a lot to Guy, Marty and the gang for holding onto your Western values. It's a good thing you're in a management position. Your Russian underlings have a lot to learn from people like you. And so will your Russian investors, when the time comes for them to see just how you've been spending their money.