Obama should out Putin's wealth as payback for Russia's election hacking

For normal countries, this kind of information on a national leader would be political poison. But for Putin it won’t be. When the Panama Papers were released this year, implicating Russian oligarchs in shielding their wealth in offshore accounts, there was little interest inside Russia. Most Russians expect their leaders to be corrupt.

The effect of a disclosure by the Obama administration though would be apparent in the West. Putin may not care whether his citizens know how corrupt he is. But I bet his Western bankers and business partners do. Fiona Hill, a senior fellow and Russia expert at the Brookings Institution, told me Monday: “The one thing about revealing this information is that it would stigmatize his wealth. This is shining a spotlight on him and his allies.”

Hill added, however, that she did not know how much concrete information the U.S. government had in this regard. Putin is very good at hiding his money.

It’s doubtful that Trump would begin his presidency by imposing sanctions on the Russians for the electoral hacks. But having a detailed, public record of Putin’s and his inner circle’s wealth would at least leave this option open for European governments. And who knows: in a month or a year, the Trump administration might have a vendetta against Putin, and if it does, the justification for sanctions will already be a matter of public record.