In 1999, Russia’s prosecutor general – the rough equivalent of a U.S. attorney general – vowed to investigate corruption allegations involving the family of then-President Boris Yeltsin.
Then a funny thing happened. Russian TV began showing grainy video footage of the prosecutor, Yuri Skuratov, cavorting in the nude with two young women. Some observers expressed skepticism that the man in the video was actually Skuratov. But any doubts were put to rest by the head of Russia’s internal security service, who declared that his agency’s experts had confirmed the prosecutor’s identity. The man who made the statement was Vladimir Putin, and his words sealed Skuratov’s political fate. The corruption probe faded away, and a few months later a grateful Yeltsin appointed Putin to the office of prime minister, and later as his own successor.
