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A man walks past a graffiti depicting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Lisbon.
A man walks past a graffiti depicting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Lisbon.
(RAFAEL MARCHANTE/REUTERS)

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Should the EU bail out the Russian mafia?

Angela Merkel is having sleepless nights over the bailout of an insolvent Mediterranean state. This time, the German chancellor is not worried about Greece or Spain. The headache is over tiny Cyprus, which has requested €10-billion in aid to keep its rickety banking system afloat. It’s a small sum compared to the mountain of German euros underwriting Greece but an investigation by Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German foreign intelligence agency, found that the main beneficiaries of a Cyprus rescue are likely to be Russian oligarchs and money-launderers.