Russia: Medvedev pushes for a big clean-up

RUSSIA’S GOVERNMENT SEEMS intent on cleaning up the country’s notoriously investor-unfriendly financial system. Global investors hope that the country is ready to usher in a cleaner and more transparent era as the worst effects of the global financial crisis fade. Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, a pragmatic technocrat who is devoid of the worst of premier Vladimir Putin’s sabre-rattling paranoia, is starting to impose his own authority over power brokers in the Kremlin, the army and the government.