In Moscow, Vice President Biden gets specific on corruption

MOSCOW - Vice President Biden heaped praise on Russia on Thursday, calling it a nation of great creativity, great culture and great engineering, but he said it would have to get its legal house in order if it expected to attract more foreign business and investment.

In a speech at Moscow State University, Biden mentioned two of Russia's most notorious recent cases involving business and the courts - those of imprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and lawyer and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow jail cell in 2009 - and then said that "no amount of cheerleading" would lure back "wronged and nervous investors."

"Get your system right," he said.

Thursday was the second of two full days that Biden spent in Moscow, meeting with business leaders, human rights advocates and opposition politicians, as well as President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Biden said the Obama administration strongly supports Russian entry into the World Trade Organization. For one thing, he said, it would give American firms "predictable access" to Russia's growing market.

At one point in the speech in which he lambasted Russia's legal system, Biden seemed to compare the United States to the bank robber Willie Sutton. He said that when people ask him why Americans are interested in Russian business, he is reminded of Sutton's famous quip about robbing banks because that's where the money is. But he did not complete the thought.

Addressing the students who made up most of his audience, along with university officials and Russian and American business leaders, he said, "Don't compromise on the basic elements of democracy."

And a free press, he said, "is the single best guarantee of political freedom."

In mentioning Khodorkovsky and Magnitsky by name, Biden boosted public pressure on Moscow just as Russia is drawing close to WTO membership. He pointed out that Medvedev has lamented Russian corruption, and he quoted Medvedev's description of Russia as "a country of legal nihilism."

Russians, Biden said, "want to live in a country that fights corruption."