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[Lord_Byron28]

Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonid "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership

Oleg Deripaska is the founder and majority owner of RUSAL, the world's second largest aluminum company, based in Russia. Len Blavatnik owns a significant stake in RUSAL and served on its Board until November 10, 2016, two days after Donald Trump was elected. Blavatnik's resignation from RUSAL's board was published on the company's website with a note in all caps: "NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES."

Deripaska controls RUSAL with a 48 percent majority stake through his holding company, EN+ Group, and the Russian government owns 4.35 percent stake of EN+ Group through its second-largest state owned bank, VTB. VTB was exposed in the Panama papers in 2016for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Vladimir Putin and is under sanctions by the U.S. government.
Deripaska has been closely connected to the Kremlin since he married into Boris Yeltsin's family in 2001, which literally includes him in the Russian clan known as "The Family."According to the Associated Press, starting in 2006, Deripaska made annual payments of $10 million to Paul Manafort through the Bank of Cyprus to advance Putin's global agenda.

Len Blavatnik's co-owner in RUSAL is his long-time business partner, Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. Blavatnik and Vekselberg hold their 15.8 percent joint stake in RUSAL in the name of Sual Partners, their offshore company in the Bahamas. Vekselberg also happens to be the largest shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus.
Another oligarch with close ties to Putin, Dmitry Rybolovlev, owns a 3.3 percent stake in the Bank of Cyprus. Rybolovlev is known as "Russia's Fertilizer King" and has been in the spotlight for several months as the purchaser of Trump's 60,000 square-foot mansion in Palm Beach. Rybolovlev bought the estate for $54 million more than Trump paid for the property at the bottom of the crash in the U.S. real estate market.

While there have been tensions between Putin and Deripaska over the years, the Kremlin came to Deripaska's rescue in 2009 when he was on the verge of bankruptcy by providing a $4.5 billion emergency loan through state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB), where Putin is chair of the advisory board.

VEB, known as President Putin's "pet bank," is now in crisis after sanctions applied by Europe and U.S. in 2014 have isolated it from the international banks that were the sources of its nearly $4 billion in hard currency loans that, according to Bloomberg, mature this year and in 2018.

Russia's international currency reserves are near a 10-year low, which has put further pressure on the president of VEB, Sergey Gorkov, to find sources of international rescue capital. Notably, it was Gorkov who met secretly with Jared Kushner in December at Trump Tower.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/...connects-russian-oligarch-money-gop-campaigns

More at the link.

 

[Wilsongt]

It's an opinion piece. But, if true and comfirmed, more oppo droppo is delicious.

 

[Guevara]

Maybe this is how we can get campaign finance reform.

No one should be receiving millions from foreign individuals, Putin-related or not.

 

[Fenderputty]

Maybe this is how we can get campaign finance reform.

No one should be receiving millions from foreign individuals, Putin-related or not.

I feel like you could replace "campaign finance reform" with "faster than light travel" and it would be about as likely.

 

[5taquitos]

How rare is this nothingburger?

 

[Thelonelykoopa]

Is there additonal sources?

 

[Saint Gregory]

I feel like all of this is viral marketing for the next Bond picture. If Daniel Craig is called to testify for the Senate Committee then I'll know for sure.

 

[Bob Coffee]

How rare is this nothingburger?

not quite medium rare. needs some garlic salt.

 

[PantherLotus]

A larger conspiracy between [Russia] and [GOP leadership] would be too devastating to believe. Our democracy is already in shambles, but I think this being true would be the death knell. Quite serious.

If true -- any of it -- pray that it's limited to just a couple people like McConnell. The wider-spread it is, the less we'll be able recover from it.

Now imagine what happens if Fox News is involved.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

these thinly sourced "contributor" pieces from non-journalists which present no context, provide no links, and make unsupported claims (or at least claims which find no support in their respected articles) are increasingly annoying.

but I'm sure that some random global business professor at the University of Dallas in her spare time find these connection that's gonna blow everything up

btw the guy in the article who donated is a US citizen

 

[Steel]

How rare is this nothingburger?

This article in particular is pretty likely to be a nothingburger.

 

[Pizza]

God I'd love for all of this to be true as hell. It'd make sense considering the FBI probe is slowly but surely growing in scope

 

[Puppet Shadow]

Ya, I'm not really sure you can expect politicians to hire forensic accountants to look through donations from american citizens to ensure the money trail is clean. Nor would you want them to.

 

[SecretMoblin]

Maybe this is how we can get campaign finance reform.

No one should be receiving millions from foreign individuals, Putin-related or not.

FECA has prohibited campaign contributions (or donations, or any sort of direct or indirect financial support) from foreign nationals for a very long time now.

these thinly sourced "contributor" pieces from non-journalists which present no context, provide no links, and make unsupported claims (or at least claims which find no support in their respected articles) are increasingly annoying.

but I'm sure that some random global business professor at the University of Dallas in her spare time find these connection that's gonna blow everything up

btw the guy in the article who donated is a US citizen

I agree with this take. The piece reads like some of the Junior GAF Detective posts in the immediate aftermath of the election.

 

[Lord_Byron28]

these thinly sourced "contributor" pieces from non-journalists which present no context, provide no links, and make unsupported claims (or at least claims which find no support in their respected articles) are increasingly annoying.

but I'm sure that some random global business professor at the University of Dallas in her spare time find these connection that's gonna blow everything up

btw the guy in the article who donated is a US citizen

All of the info in this article is public info. This article does list website you can use to look it up for yourself. Also the article does state that he is a US and UK dual citizen. There is more at the link voting I do that others found as well. Yes this is a piece connecting numerous stories with previous scandals and publicly available campaign donation information. While not a smoking gun it is a little troublesome. Blavatnik being Putin's lapdog has been known for many years prior to this election. See the outrage when Oxford University was going to accept money from him.

Ya, I'm not really sure you can expect politicians to hire forensic accountants to look through donations from american citizens to ensure the money trail is clean. Nor would you want them to.

It goes through their Superpacs which should be screening these things.