A star-studded hotel opening has cost thousands of Moscow market traders their jobs. Shaun Walker explains why
(The Independent, Thursday, 16 July 2009)
Farhad, a 37-year-old migrant labourer from Tajikistan, has little in common with Russia's rich. Sporting an Adidas tracksuit, squatting with a beer on a bench outside the closed and shuttered Cherkizovsky market, he couldn't be further away from the flashy cars, luxury villas and private jets of Russia's oligarch class. But bizarrely, Farhad, along with about 100,000 traders who lost their jobs when the market in Moscow was closed down two weeks ago, may have been made unemployed as a result of the oligarchic party of parties: a tasteless show of wealth that apparently infuriated the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin.
Cherkizovsky was the biggest market in eastern Europe, a sprawling bazaar where crowds streamed to buy everything from electronics to clothes and carpets. An estimated 5,000 buses arrived at the market every day, filled with shuttle traders who would buy up cheap goods in bulk and take them back to smaller markets in towns and cities across European Russia.
Two weeks ago, the market was closed down by police in what appears to be an attack on the extravagant Azeri businessman Telman Ismailov, the market's owner. Mr Ismailov, famous for throwing some of the world's most lavish parties, opened a resort hotel in Turkey in May that reportedly cost about £1bn to build. The Mardan Palace, named after Mr Ismailov's late father, has 17 bars, 10 restaurants, a swimming pool so vast that it takes half an hour to cross by gondola, rooms decorated in over-the-top palatial opulence, and a beach made with 9,000 tonnes of artificial sand.
Cherkizovsky was the biggest market in eastern Europe, a sprawling bazaar where crowds streamed to buy everything from electronics to clothes and carpets. An estimated 5,000 buses arrived at the market every day, filled with shuttle traders who would buy up cheap goods in bulk and take them back to smaller markets in towns and cities across European Russia.
Two weeks ago, the market was closed down by police in what appears to be an attack on the extravagant Azeri businessman Telman Ismailov, the market's owner. Mr Ismailov, famous for throwing some of the world's most lavish parties, opened a resort hotel in Turkey in May that reportedly cost about £1bn to build. The Mardan Palace, named after Mr Ismailov's late father, has 17 bars, 10 restaurants, a swimming pool so vast that it takes half an hour to cross by gondola, rooms decorated in over-the-top palatial opulence, and a beach made with 9,000 tonnes of artificial sand.
