RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
- Start date
Jay is reaching.
Kremlin Cash Behind Billionaire’s Twitter and Facebook Investments
Leaked files show that a state-controlled bank in Moscow helped to fuel Yuri Milner’s ascent in Silicon Valley, where the Russia investigation has put tech companies under scrutiny.
By JESSE DRUCKERNOV. 5, 2017
Yuri Milner, a Russian billionaire whose holdings have included major stakes in Facebook and Twitter. Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg, via Getty Images
In fall 2010, the Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner took the stage for a Q. and A. at a technology conference in San Francisco. Mr. Milner, whose holdings have included major stakes in Facebook and Twitter, is known for expounding on everything from the future of social media to the frontiers of space travel. But when someone asked a question that had swirled around his Silicon Valley ascent — who were his investors? — he did not answer, turning repeatedly to the moderator with a look of incomprehension.
Now, leaked documents examined by The New York Times offer a partial answer: Behind Mr. Milner’s investments in Facebook and Twitter were hundreds of millions of dollars from the Kremlin.
Obscured by a maze of offshore shell companies, the Twitter investment was backed by VTB, a Russian state-controlled bank often used for politically strategic deals.
And a big investor in Mr. Milner’s Facebook deal received financing from Gazprom Investholding, another government-controlled financial institution, according to the documents. They include a cache of records from the Bermuda law firm Appleby that were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and reviewed by The Times in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Ultimately, Mr. Milner’s companies came to own more than 8 percent of Facebook and 5 percent of Twitter, helping earn him a place on various lists of the world’s most powerful business people. His companies sold those holdings several years ago, but he retains investments in several other large technology companies and continues to make new deals. Among Mr. Milner’s current investments is a real estate venture founded and partly owned by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser.
Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites have become a major focus of federal investigations into Kremlin interference in the 2016 election. Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators are examining how Russians linked to the Kremlin turned the sites into garden hoses of bogus news stories and divisive political ads, and whether they coordinated with the Trump campaign.
No one has suggested that Mr. Milner or his companies had any connection to the propaganda operation. For his part, Mr. Milner said in a pair of recent interviews that the Russian government money was no different from the financing he had received from his many other investors around the world.
A Russian Billionaire Investor’s Stake in American Technology Companies
The Kremlin controls Gazprom Investholding and VTB Bank.
Gazprom Investholding lent hundreds of millions of dollars to Kanton Services.
Kanton Services owned
DST USA II, which was used to invest in Facebook.
VTB Bank gave $191 million
to DST Investments 3
for its stake in Twitter.
The venture capitalist Yuri Milner founded DST Global, which managed DST USA II and DST Investments 3.
Even so, his use of the state-directed apparatus employed by so many Russian oligarchs to enrich themselves shows how the Kremlin has extended its long financial arm not only to his company but to some of America’s technology giants.
“Kremlin-connected institutions make investments with strategic interests in mind — not just commercial interests but state interests as well,” said Michael Carpenter, the National Security Council’s Russia director in the Obama administration, who is now senior director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. “They go hand in hand.”
Mr. Carpenter added, “Oligarchs who receive significant amounts of financial support from Russian banks like VTB or Sberbank or Gazprombank have to pass above a political threshold, meaning such support requires the explicit or tacit approval of those at the top of Russia’s crony capitalist system.”
There is nothing illegal about foreign state-owned institutions investing in American companies. VTB and Gazprom said the transactions were both sound investments, not motivated by political considerations.
As Mr. Milner sees it, the story is similarly simple — “nothing more than business,” he said, adding: “We are getting money, and we are putting them in Facebook and Twitter. We are making money for our limited partners, and we are giving money back to them. For me, it’s a commercial arrangement.”
The Path to Silicon Valley
Mr. Milner, 55, studied theoretical physics at Moscow State University before moving to the United States, where he attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1990s and then worked for the World Bank in Washington.
He returned to Russia and in the late 1990s and worked as an executive at Bank Menatep, which was founded by Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the oil tyc00n who was stripped of his company, prosecuted and imprisoned after a televised confrontation with President Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Milner eventually teamed with Alisher Usmanov — an Uzbek-Russian oligarch close to the Russian prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev — and a former Goldman Sachs executive to build a significant stake in Mail.ru, a Russian internet company that now trades on the London Stock Exchange.
Mr. Milner’s initial American investments came as he served on an innovation commission set up in 2009 by Mr. Medvedev, who was Russia’s president at the time and is something of a tech enthusiast, famously touring Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., with Steve Jobs.
In May 2009, Facebook announced an investment of roughly $200 million by Mr. Milner’s company, Digital Sky Technologies, and said the company planned to spend at least $100 million buying additional stock. Eventually, Mr. Milner’s new venture capital firm, DST Global, also amassed a significant stake in Facebook.
Mr. Milner, right, with Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook. The company, along with Twitter and other social media sites, has become a major focus of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Kimberly White/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize
“A number of firms approached us, but DST stood out because of the global perspective they bring,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said at the time.
The documents reviewed by The Times reveal that DST brought something else as well: a connection — through a succession of shell companies — to the Kremlin.
Ties to the Russian State
In those years, as part of its diplomatic “reset” with Moscow, the Obama administration was encouraging Russia to learn from the American technology industry. Importing tech knowledge, the theory went, would ease Russia’s dependence on exporting oil and gas.
For the Facebook deal, it was Gazprom, the state-controlled natural-gas giant, that became the bridge. The company, a vital component of the Putin government has employed its financial subsidiary, Gazprom Investholding, to reclaim assets privatized during the 1990s.
Gazprom Investholding is “used for politically important and strategically important deals for the Kremlin,” said Ilya Zaslavskiy, a contributor to the Kleptocracy Initiative, a project of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Both VTB and Gazprom Investholding’s parent, Gazprom, are under United States sanctions stemming from Russia’s support of separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Over several years, Gazprom Investholding and a subsidiary made hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to a company called Kanton Services, according to records from the Panama Papers, the trove of leaked documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca. Kanton, in turn, owned one of the DST investment vehicles used to buy shares of Facebook. While it is unclear precisely when Kanton first received its stake in the DST entity, Kanton received $197 million of the Gazprom Investholding loans three months before Facebook announced its first deal with Mr. Milner, the records show.
Kanton, based in the British Virgin Islands, had numerous ties to Mr. Milner’s backer, Mr. Usmanov.
Kanton was owned by a longtime Usmanov business associate, and was controlled by Matthias Bolliger, a director of numerous subsidiaries of Mr. Usmanov’s main holding company, USM Holdings, according to an Appleby memo and the Panama Papers. And an email sent by a trust company on the Isle of Man used by Mr. Usmanov referred to Kanton as a “private investment company, (facebook and twitter).”
In the interviews, Mr. Milner said his investors’ identities were not generally public information. And he sought to distance his company from Mr. Usmanov. “I had no knowledge of him using state funds to invest with us,” he said. What’s more, he said, Mr. Usmanov had many potential sources of financing, making it impossible to know whether money from Gazprom Investholding was even used to finance his stake in Facebook.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, right, with Mr. Milner’s backer, the Uzbek-Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov. Michael Klimentyev/Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
To demonstrate this, Mr. Milner set out a series of clear plastic cups with labels like “Alleged Russian government funds,” “Mr. Usmanov” and “Facebook.” He pulled out a large bag of green M&M’s, filled several cups and proceeded to shift the M&M’s from one cup to another. “Money is fungible,” he explained, adding, “You can’t just say that this specific dollar went all the way to Facebook.”
A spokesman for Mr. Usmanov, Rollo Head, did not address specific questions. But in a statement, he insisted that there are clear streams of money that do not mingle. Mr. Usmanov, he said, “did not borrow from or use state or quasi-state funds to make investments in Facebook.”
Lucrative ‘Synergies’
The Facebook deal was a case study in the way Russia’s oligarchs have mixed public and private roles for their own, and their government’s, benefit: Even as he was investing in Facebook, Mr. Usmanov was general director of Gazprom Investholding.
In fact, Mr. Usmanov had often intertwined his government position with his personal deals, according to a report by the global investigations and security firm Kroll. Kroll described those arrangements as “synergies.”
The Kroll report — a “reputation audit” — had been commissioned by Mr. Usmanov as he set out to burnish his image a year before his deal with Mr. Milner to invest in Facebook. Kroll investigators, relying on public records and interviews, detailed a long and colorful history: time in prison in Uzbekistan (he was later exonerated) and past associations with alleged Russian organized crime figures, according to a draft copy of the report reviewed by The Times.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy!
PART 2:
The investigators also recounted a dizzying number of deals — involving mining, media and technology companies, often with the assistance of the Kremlin and Mr. Medvedev. “Usmanov looks set to end the Putin era as the ‘most improved’ oligarch over the past eight years,” one source told Kroll.
Kroll investigators found that, for some investments, Mr. Usmanov turned to Kanton, the company that would be a part of Mr. Milner’s Facebook investment.
A Facebook spokeswoman, Vanessa Chan, declined to answer specific questions about the deal with DST, calling it a “passive investor” and noting that the company had invested and cashed out several years ago.
Gazprom Investholding called the loans “prudent,” saying they were “provided for general corporate purposes” at above-market rates. The company did not answer a question about what role, if any, Mr. Usmanov played in the loans, except to say that as its general director, he “operated in accordance” with the company’s charter.
To complete the Facebook deal, DST used a pair of lawyers based in Cyprus and Britain who have also set up offshore entities for Russian oligarchs close to Mr. Putin, according to the Panama Papers, United States securities filings and records from Appleby. DST did not answer questions about how it came to use the two lawyers.
After the Facebook deal, Mr. Milner became a fixture in Silicon Valley, spending about $100 million on a 25,000-square-foot house in Los Altos Hills and investing $7 billion in more than 30 companies, including Spotify, Airbnb and Groupon.
A home in Los Altos Hills, Calif., that Mr. Milner bought for $100 million after investing in Facebook. Paul Sakuma/Associated Press
In interviews, he has referred to his close relationship to management at the companies in which he invests. Mr. Milner and Mr. Zuckerberg became friends and met monthly. Still, despite his company’s sizable stake, Mr. Milner did not take a board seat or voting rights.
At the 2010 technology conference in San Francisco, Mr. Milner was asked if he provided management with advice along with his cash. “I think it’s actually the opposite,” he replied. “I sometimes get informal advice from them.”
Obscure Financial Maneuvers
Mr. Milner’s roughly $380 million investment in Twitter was directly backed by another instrument of Kremlin power: Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB.
Sixty-one percent of the bank is owned by the Russian government. VTB’s president, Andrey L. Kostin, is a former Soviet diplomat; Matthias Warnig, on the bank’s supervisory council, is a former East German spy who served in Dresden while Mr. Putin was stationed there with the K.G.B.
VTB has operations across the world, including in the United States. In recent years, it has been involved in a number of politically sensitive deals, including a loan that financed the Russian government’s murky privatization of 19.5 percent of the oil giant Rosneft.
Last year, the Panama Papers revealed that a Cyprus bank owned by VTB was used to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to accounts connected to Sergei Roldugin, a cellist and close friend of Mr. Putin. It was unknown what the money was for, but some speculated that he was working as a frontman for Kremlin insiders.
Mr. Roldugin did not respond to messages for this article, but said at the time that his wealth came through donations from rich businessmen for the purchase of musical instruments.
VTB called the account in the Panama Papers “unsubstantiated.”
A company owned by a Russian bank that supported Mr. Milner’s Twitter deal transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to accounts linked to Sergei Roldugin, a cellist some speculated was a frontman for Kremlin insiders. Sergey Guneev/Sputnik, via Associated Press
“VTB is really a slush fund for Putin,” said Anders Aslund, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, and an early economic adviser to the post-Soviet Russian government. The bank, he added, is “the black cashier of the Putin crowd.”
Mr. Milner’s Twitter deal is a complex web of share transfers and offshore financial entities. But its details may offer clues that there was a strategic motive behind VTB’s involvement.
In July 2011, VTB invested at least $191 million in exchange for shares of an Isle of Man company called DST Investments 3, corporate records show. That offshore vehicle was used to buy roughly half of DST Global’s stake in Twitter that month. DST Investments 3 also issued shares to Kanton, the company linked to Mr. Usmanov that was at the center of the Facebook deal.
The Twitter deal had a notable feature: VTB put virtually all of the cash into DST Investments 3, filings show. Kanton contributed almost none. It is highly unusual for investors in DST funds to get stakes without contributing cash, according to a person familiar with the matter.
On May 7, 2014 — six months after Twitter’s initial public offering, when insiders were first permitted to sell their shares — VTB transferred the bulk of its stake in DST Investments 3 to Kanton. DST also cashed out its Twitter investment.
DST had one other investment from VTB, which Mr. Milner compared to a sovereign wealth fund. VTB was an investor in the Chinese internet company JD.com as recently as February 2015, when it transferred its stake to Kanton, Isle of Man records show.
In a statement, VTB said its involvement with Twitter was “solely a financial investment,” sold for a profit, one of several successful deals in the high-tech industry in that period. The bank added, “VTB is a solely commercial bank, we have never had any politically motivated deals.”
Twitter declined to answer a series of questions about VTB, but said that as a matter of policy it had done reviews of all pre-I.P.O. investors.
Mr. Milner would not discuss how VTB came to be an investor, other than to say that the bank helped take Mail.ru public in 2010. According to the Kroll report, the Kremlin had previously ordered VTB to finance other ventures of Mr. Usmanov. The report also details the close relationship between Mr. Usmanov and Mr. Medvedev, finding that Mr. Medvedev helped him win a bid for a lucrative copper ore deposit in Siberia.
Beyond Social Media
Mr. Milner has also been active beyond Silicon Valley. He is a founder of the Breakthrough Prize, a series of lucrative scientific awards. And in July 2015, he was one of several high-profile investors in Cadre, a New York-based real estate technology company founded by Mr. Kushner and his brother, Joshua. (Other investors and partners include Goldman Sachs, George Soros and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.)
Mr. Milner said he invested $850,000 in Cadre through a trust, which in turn controls DST Global Advisers, DST Global’s investment management firm. He said he was introduced to the company through an early investor whose name he did not remember. He said he met Jared Kushner only once, at a conference in Aspen, Colo.
Mr. Kushner and Cadre declined to comment.
Mr. Milner, whose technology interests are wide-ranging, appeared with the physicist Stephen Hawking in Manhattan last year to announce a space exploration initiative. Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In his interviews with The Times, Mr. Milner shied away from the controversy now enveloping Facebook and Twitter, his former major investments.
Growing up in the Soviet Union, he said, “if you’re a father and you have a conversation with your son, it’s easy to say, ‘Please don’t get involved in politics.’”
That “was my principle back then and still now,” he said, adding: “I prefer just to focus on business and philanthropy. And this is plenty for me.”
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy!
The investigators also recounted a dizzying number of deals — involving mining, media and technology companies, often with the assistance of the Kremlin and Mr. Medvedev. “Usmanov looks set to end the Putin era as the ‘most improved’ oligarch over the past eight years,” one source told Kroll.
Kroll investigators found that, for some investments, Mr. Usmanov turned to Kanton, the company that would be a part of Mr. Milner’s Facebook investment.
A Facebook spokeswoman, Vanessa Chan, declined to answer specific questions about the deal with DST, calling it a “passive investor” and noting that the company had invested and cashed out several years ago.
Gazprom Investholding called the loans “prudent,” saying they were “provided for general corporate purposes” at above-market rates. The company did not answer a question about what role, if any, Mr. Usmanov played in the loans, except to say that as its general director, he “operated in accordance” with the company’s charter.
To complete the Facebook deal, DST used a pair of lawyers based in Cyprus and Britain who have also set up offshore entities for Russian oligarchs close to Mr. Putin, according to the Panama Papers, United States securities filings and records from Appleby. DST did not answer questions about how it came to use the two lawyers.
After the Facebook deal, Mr. Milner became a fixture in Silicon Valley, spending about $100 million on a 25,000-square-foot house in Los Altos Hills and investing $7 billion in more than 30 companies, including Spotify, Airbnb and Groupon.
A home in Los Altos Hills, Calif., that Mr. Milner bought for $100 million after investing in Facebook. Paul Sakuma/Associated Press
In interviews, he has referred to his close relationship to management at the companies in which he invests. Mr. Milner and Mr. Zuckerberg became friends and met monthly. Still, despite his company’s sizable stake, Mr. Milner did not take a board seat or voting rights.
At the 2010 technology conference in San Francisco, Mr. Milner was asked if he provided management with advice along with his cash. “I think it’s actually the opposite,” he replied. “I sometimes get informal advice from them.”
Obscure Financial Maneuvers
Mr. Milner’s roughly $380 million investment in Twitter was directly backed by another instrument of Kremlin power: Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB.
Sixty-one percent of the bank is owned by the Russian government. VTB’s president, Andrey L. Kostin, is a former Soviet diplomat; Matthias Warnig, on the bank’s supervisory council, is a former East German spy who served in Dresden while Mr. Putin was stationed there with the K.G.B.
VTB has operations across the world, including in the United States. In recent years, it has been involved in a number of politically sensitive deals, including a loan that financed the Russian government’s murky privatization of 19.5 percent of the oil giant Rosneft.
Last year, the Panama Papers revealed that a Cyprus bank owned by VTB was used to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to accounts connected to Sergei Roldugin, a cellist and close friend of Mr. Putin. It was unknown what the money was for, but some speculated that he was working as a frontman for Kremlin insiders.
Mr. Roldugin did not respond to messages for this article, but said at the time that his wealth came through donations from rich businessmen for the purchase of musical instruments.
VTB called the account in the Panama Papers “unsubstantiated.”
A company owned by a Russian bank that supported Mr. Milner’s Twitter deal transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to accounts linked to Sergei Roldugin, a cellist some speculated was a frontman for Kremlin insiders. Sergey Guneev/Sputnik, via Associated Press
“VTB is really a slush fund for Putin,” said Anders Aslund, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, and an early economic adviser to the post-Soviet Russian government. The bank, he added, is “the black cashier of the Putin crowd.”
Mr. Milner’s Twitter deal is a complex web of share transfers and offshore financial entities. But its details may offer clues that there was a strategic motive behind VTB’s involvement.
In July 2011, VTB invested at least $191 million in exchange for shares of an Isle of Man company called DST Investments 3, corporate records show. That offshore vehicle was used to buy roughly half of DST Global’s stake in Twitter that month. DST Investments 3 also issued shares to Kanton, the company linked to Mr. Usmanov that was at the center of the Facebook deal.
The Twitter deal had a notable feature: VTB put virtually all of the cash into DST Investments 3, filings show. Kanton contributed almost none. It is highly unusual for investors in DST funds to get stakes without contributing cash, according to a person familiar with the matter.
On May 7, 2014 — six months after Twitter’s initial public offering, when insiders were first permitted to sell their shares — VTB transferred the bulk of its stake in DST Investments 3 to Kanton. DST also cashed out its Twitter investment.
DST had one other investment from VTB, which Mr. Milner compared to a sovereign wealth fund. VTB was an investor in the Chinese internet company JD.com as recently as February 2015, when it transferred its stake to Kanton, Isle of Man records show.
In a statement, VTB said its involvement with Twitter was “solely a financial investment,” sold for a profit, one of several successful deals in the high-tech industry in that period. The bank added, “VTB is a solely commercial bank, we have never had any politically motivated deals.”
Twitter declined to answer a series of questions about VTB, but said that as a matter of policy it had done reviews of all pre-I.P.O. investors.
Mr. Milner would not discuss how VTB came to be an investor, other than to say that the bank helped take Mail.ru public in 2010. According to the Kroll report, the Kremlin had previously ordered VTB to finance other ventures of Mr. Usmanov. The report also details the close relationship between Mr. Usmanov and Mr. Medvedev, finding that Mr. Medvedev helped him win a bid for a lucrative copper ore deposit in Siberia.
Beyond Social Media
Mr. Milner has also been active beyond Silicon Valley. He is a founder of the Breakthrough Prize, a series of lucrative scientific awards. And in July 2015, he was one of several high-profile investors in Cadre, a New York-based real estate technology company founded by Mr. Kushner and his brother, Joshua. (Other investors and partners include Goldman Sachs, George Soros and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.)
Mr. Milner said he invested $850,000 in Cadre through a trust, which in turn controls DST Global Advisers, DST Global’s investment management firm. He said he was introduced to the company through an early investor whose name he did not remember. He said he met Jared Kushner only once, at a conference in Aspen, Colo.
Mr. Kushner and Cadre declined to comment.
Mr. Milner, whose technology interests are wide-ranging, appeared with the physicist Stephen Hawking in Manhattan last year to announce a space exploration initiative. Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In his interviews with The Times, Mr. Milner shied away from the controversy now enveloping Facebook and Twitter, his former major investments.
Growing up in the Soviet Union, he said, “if you’re a father and you have a conversation with your son, it’s easy to say, ‘Please don’t get involved in politics.’”
That “was my principle back then and still now,” he said, adding: “I prefer just to focus on business and philanthropy. And this is plenty for me.”
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy!
JamesFourM?
Nah. He's not.
He's the entire reason I read into the Wilbur Ross/Manafort/Socialmedia/Russia investment shyt.
He's 100% on the money. All the way there.
He called it out first to the masses. Weeks. Months ago.
For those in the back:
Russia state-owned VTB and Gazprom are behind Mr. Milner’s ownership of more than 8% of Facebook and 5% of Twitter.
Rex Tillerson is on the list too....
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy!
Hood Critic
The Power Circle
The GOP doesn't get to talk about Tax Reform until they identify a way to bring taxes from all this offshore money back home. 
The US about to seize that share of FB stock lmaoo
Holy. shyt.
Someone on reddit warned us 2 weeks ago about this Paradise Papers leak!!!!
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy!
Someone on reddit warned us 2 weeks ago about this Paradise Papers leak!!!!
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy!
50% of Russian GDP is offshore 
Again, people were WAY, WAY ahead on this...this is wild:...TWO MONTHS AGO!
A Dirty Little Secret
Posted on September 14, 2017 by Zev Shalev and Tracie McElroy
An investigation into Facebook’s political donations to Republican and anti-LGBT politicians and its investments from Putin-linked Russian oligarchs. We found a pattern of political activity at odds with the company’s public image.
At 33, Mark Zuckerberg is one of the world’s most recognizable names. Zuckerberg is also one of its richest, estimated to be worth $73.7 billion. The Facebook founder publicly espouses liberal notions on everything from gay rights to immigration but a closer look under the hood of Facebook’s finances and political operations reveals a record of support for conservative causes, opposition to LGBT rights and connections to Russian money.
Zuckerberg is now under enormous pressure to reveal more about Facebook’s role in a Russian propaganda campaign in support of Donald Trump in the 2016 election cycle. Despite a coy statement revealing $150,000 in advertising spend by a Russian social media firm with ties to Vladimir Putin and the FSB and new revelations the social network allowed Russian operatives posing as Americans to create and sell tickets to anti-immigration, secessionist, anti-LGBT and confederate events, Facebook is refusing to release the ads, groups and who was targeted.
“It appeared to me that the very social media sites that we rely on for virtually everything — our Facebooks, Googles and Twitters — it was my belief the Russians were using those sites to intervene in our elections,” Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) told CNN “And the first reaction from Facebook was: ‘Well you’re crazy, there’s nothing going on’ — well, we find yesterday there actually was something going on.”
Amid all this pressure, a renewed spotlight should be shone on why Facebook donated $120,000 to the Conservative Political Action Committee. Facebook made the donation to CPAC partly to allow conference attendees could easily produce Facebook Live videos, according to the Daily Beast. Facebook had previously contributed to production at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions but the decision to support a partisan action committee conference raises questions about the motives of the donation amid conflicting statements from Facebook and CPAC.
The social network acknowledged the payment but said “our involvement is not an endorsement of any particular position or platform.” CPAC’s Matt Schlapp indicated however there was some ideological participation: “We are glad Facebook agreed to be at CPAC and to acknowledge the importance of conservatives to their company, and we continue to work with them on issues important to conservatives,” he said.
The CPAC convention took place at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md in February this year and featured President Donald Trump, VP Mike Pence, Stephen Bannon, Reince Priebus, Kellyanne Conway. The NRA which is also linked to Russian influence is a big funder of CPAC.
President Donald Trump speaks at the CPAC convention in February. Facebook donated $120,000 to the convention .
Since 2011, Facebook’s PAC has contributed more to GOP candidates including those with anti-LGBT positions.
Facebook started its own Political Action Committee in 2011. The PAC supports politicians on both sides of the aisle which tends to favor Republican causes, giving $477,000 to Republican candidates like John Boehner and Paul Ryan. The PAC gave Democrats $425,000 in donations including to John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi. The PAC only supported one presidential candidate in 2016, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who received $4,000.
Since 2012, Facebook has also favored politicians with anti-LGBT voting records. More than 40 percent of Facebook’s PAC contributions, totaling roughly $156,000, have gone to politicians voting against LGBT rights. In 2014, Northstar Asset Management which owns more than 55,000 shares in Facebook filed a complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission demanding the company’s PAC fall in line with Facebook’s values of being pro-gay and intellectual property rights.
Facebook rejected the claim, saying: “We have practices in place to ensure the appropriate disclosure and oversight of our lobbying and political activities. The proposal seeks to impose requirements that would be cumbersome to apply, are not required by law and are not standard amongst other companies, including competitors”.
A look inside Facebook also reveals a culture devoid of diversity. There are literally no people of color on Facebook’s board which is mostly men. As a whole, 90% of Facebook is white or asian. In 2015, only 2% black overall and 3% black in senior leadership.
One of those white men who has a seat on the board is Peter Thiel, an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump (he personally donated $1.25 million to the Trump campaign and spoke at the RNC). Zuckerberg has resisted pressure to oust Thiel from the board but as investigators turn up evidence of Facebook’s role in targeting and delivering Facebook ads on behalf of the Trump campaign, Thiel’s role is likely to receive new scrutiny.
Zuckerberg touts Thiel as an example of ideological diversity. “I think the folks who are saying we shouldn’t have someone on our board because they’re a Republican, I think that’s crazy,” Zuckerberg told a forum at North Carolina A&T State University. “I think you need to have all kinds of diversity if you want to make progress together as a society.”
Thiel is also tied to mercenary Erik Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos who favors a private army take over the war in Afghanistan and is vocally opposed to rights for transgender people.
Facebook Founder Peter Thiel speaking at the Republican National Convention in 2016. He donated $1.25 million to Trump’s campaign.
One of Facebook’s biggest shareholders is a Russian company partly-owned by an oligarch known as the “hard man” of Russia and is very close to Vladimir Putin.
In 2009, Facebook was struggling financially. The company sought outside investment and it came from Russian internet holding company Digital Sky Technologies, which invested $200 million for 2% in the company in 2009 (the stake has since climbed to between 5.4% to 10% depending on who you ask). Digital Sky’s CEO is Russian oligarch Yuri Milner but its largest shareholder and initial funder is Alisher Usmanov who is known “as the hard man” of Russia.
Usmanov is criticised for being a “racketeer and gangster”. He is a convicted criminal and was in jail in the former Soviet Union though he claims he was a political prisoner. He owns Britain’s Arsenal Football Club and investments in mines, metals factories, media properties, and mobile phones in Russia. He is the Chairman of ‘Gazpromholdings’, a subsidiary of state-run Gazprom, which has been sanctioned by the U.S.
“Usmanov became a billionaire oligarch in the gangster takeover of Russia’s “privatised” mineral assets. He is close to Putin, and has been used by him to buy up and neutralise much of the little remaining independent media in Russia. Usmanov does this in his own name or as Chairman of ‘GazpromInvestHolding’. Independent journalists have died in mysterious accidents following Usmanov takeovers,” says former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray who has taken on a personal crusade against the oligarch and was sued for his effort.
Usmanov owns 35 per cent of DST which makes him the indirect owner of a significant amount of Facebook through Digital Sky. “For a blackmailer who is a key tool in Putin’s increasingly authoritarian regime, to have a share in Facebook is totally unacceptable,” says Murray.
Digital Sky’s CEO Milner presents a cleaner image to the world but is also very close to Putin, regularly attending meetings with Usmanov and the Russian president. DST is heavily invested in Silicon Valley including investments in Twitter, Groupon and many young startups.
Facebook’s reliance on DST was not just about getting Russian money. It gave the social network access to the Kremlin and the Russian digital market. “If Facebook wants to be successful in Russia, DST can bring a lot to the table besides knowledge. DST is close to the government there, the source said, and while outright involvement (or obstruction) from the Russian government is highly unlikely, if Facebook wants its business to go more smoothly, DST can help,” a source close to DST told CNET.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov who is indirectly invested in Facebook.
Facebook has many business reasons to supports conservative voices but it remains an open question how much they knew about Russia’s interference in 2016.
Silicon Valley is increasingly concerned about aggressive Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice antitrust investigations over “unfair or deceptive”, monopolies and online data collection and use, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and spam. According to Forbes, the FTC is known in Silicon Valley as the “Federal Technology Commission”. From a business perspective Facebook’s support for conservative allies makes some sense but that they fly in the social network’s public values could harm the company.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors and FBI agents is “zeroing in on how Russia spread fake and damaging information through social media and is seeking additional evidence from companies like Facebook and Twitter about what happened on their networks,” according to Bloomberg.
Mueller’s focus on social media is said to be “red hot” and Facebook, Twitter and Google executives may be called to testify in front of congressional committees as well. More troubling is a notion first floated by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Facebook, Twitter and Google may indeed be the scene of the biggest political crime in history. This would expose the tech giants to extraordinary examination by prosecutors and ironically the very regulation they may have sought to dissuade with their political efforts.
You may also like ...
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy! @Cali_livin
A Dirty Little Secret
Posted on September 14, 2017 by Zev Shalev and Tracie McElroy
An investigation into Facebook’s political donations to Republican and anti-LGBT politicians and its investments from Putin-linked Russian oligarchs. We found a pattern of political activity at odds with the company’s public image.
At 33, Mark Zuckerberg is one of the world’s most recognizable names. Zuckerberg is also one of its richest, estimated to be worth $73.7 billion. The Facebook founder publicly espouses liberal notions on everything from gay rights to immigration but a closer look under the hood of Facebook’s finances and political operations reveals a record of support for conservative causes, opposition to LGBT rights and connections to Russian money.
Zuckerberg is now under enormous pressure to reveal more about Facebook’s role in a Russian propaganda campaign in support of Donald Trump in the 2016 election cycle. Despite a coy statement revealing $150,000 in advertising spend by a Russian social media firm with ties to Vladimir Putin and the FSB and new revelations the social network allowed Russian operatives posing as Americans to create and sell tickets to anti-immigration, secessionist, anti-LGBT and confederate events, Facebook is refusing to release the ads, groups and who was targeted.
“It appeared to me that the very social media sites that we rely on for virtually everything — our Facebooks, Googles and Twitters — it was my belief the Russians were using those sites to intervene in our elections,” Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) told CNN “And the first reaction from Facebook was: ‘Well you’re crazy, there’s nothing going on’ — well, we find yesterday there actually was something going on.”
Amid all this pressure, a renewed spotlight should be shone on why Facebook donated $120,000 to the Conservative Political Action Committee. Facebook made the donation to CPAC partly to allow conference attendees could easily produce Facebook Live videos, according to the Daily Beast. Facebook had previously contributed to production at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions but the decision to support a partisan action committee conference raises questions about the motives of the donation amid conflicting statements from Facebook and CPAC.
The social network acknowledged the payment but said “our involvement is not an endorsement of any particular position or platform.” CPAC’s Matt Schlapp indicated however there was some ideological participation: “We are glad Facebook agreed to be at CPAC and to acknowledge the importance of conservatives to their company, and we continue to work with them on issues important to conservatives,” he said.
The CPAC convention took place at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md in February this year and featured President Donald Trump, VP Mike Pence, Stephen Bannon, Reince Priebus, Kellyanne Conway. The NRA which is also linked to Russian influence is a big funder of CPAC.
President Donald Trump speaks at the CPAC convention in February. Facebook donated $120,000 to the convention .
Since 2011, Facebook’s PAC has contributed more to GOP candidates including those with anti-LGBT positions.
Facebook started its own Political Action Committee in 2011. The PAC supports politicians on both sides of the aisle which tends to favor Republican causes, giving $477,000 to Republican candidates like John Boehner and Paul Ryan. The PAC gave Democrats $425,000 in donations including to John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi. The PAC only supported one presidential candidate in 2016, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who received $4,000.
Since 2012, Facebook has also favored politicians with anti-LGBT voting records. More than 40 percent of Facebook’s PAC contributions, totaling roughly $156,000, have gone to politicians voting against LGBT rights. In 2014, Northstar Asset Management which owns more than 55,000 shares in Facebook filed a complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission demanding the company’s PAC fall in line with Facebook’s values of being pro-gay and intellectual property rights.
Facebook rejected the claim, saying: “We have practices in place to ensure the appropriate disclosure and oversight of our lobbying and political activities. The proposal seeks to impose requirements that would be cumbersome to apply, are not required by law and are not standard amongst other companies, including competitors”.
A look inside Facebook also reveals a culture devoid of diversity. There are literally no people of color on Facebook’s board which is mostly men. As a whole, 90% of Facebook is white or asian. In 2015, only 2% black overall and 3% black in senior leadership.
One of those white men who has a seat on the board is Peter Thiel, an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump (he personally donated $1.25 million to the Trump campaign and spoke at the RNC). Zuckerberg has resisted pressure to oust Thiel from the board but as investigators turn up evidence of Facebook’s role in targeting and delivering Facebook ads on behalf of the Trump campaign, Thiel’s role is likely to receive new scrutiny.
Zuckerberg touts Thiel as an example of ideological diversity. “I think the folks who are saying we shouldn’t have someone on our board because they’re a Republican, I think that’s crazy,” Zuckerberg told a forum at North Carolina A&T State University. “I think you need to have all kinds of diversity if you want to make progress together as a society.”
Thiel is also tied to mercenary Erik Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos who favors a private army take over the war in Afghanistan and is vocally opposed to rights for transgender people.
Facebook Founder Peter Thiel speaking at the Republican National Convention in 2016. He donated $1.25 million to Trump’s campaign.
One of Facebook’s biggest shareholders is a Russian company partly-owned by an oligarch known as the “hard man” of Russia and is very close to Vladimir Putin.
In 2009, Facebook was struggling financially. The company sought outside investment and it came from Russian internet holding company Digital Sky Technologies, which invested $200 million for 2% in the company in 2009 (the stake has since climbed to between 5.4% to 10% depending on who you ask). Digital Sky’s CEO is Russian oligarch Yuri Milner but its largest shareholder and initial funder is Alisher Usmanov who is known “as the hard man” of Russia.
Usmanov is criticised for being a “racketeer and gangster”. He is a convicted criminal and was in jail in the former Soviet Union though he claims he was a political prisoner. He owns Britain’s Arsenal Football Club and investments in mines, metals factories, media properties, and mobile phones in Russia. He is the Chairman of ‘Gazpromholdings’, a subsidiary of state-run Gazprom, which has been sanctioned by the U.S.
“Usmanov became a billionaire oligarch in the gangster takeover of Russia’s “privatised” mineral assets. He is close to Putin, and has been used by him to buy up and neutralise much of the little remaining independent media in Russia. Usmanov does this in his own name or as Chairman of ‘GazpromInvestHolding’. Independent journalists have died in mysterious accidents following Usmanov takeovers,” says former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray who has taken on a personal crusade against the oligarch and was sued for his effort.
Usmanov owns 35 per cent of DST which makes him the indirect owner of a significant amount of Facebook through Digital Sky. “For a blackmailer who is a key tool in Putin’s increasingly authoritarian regime, to have a share in Facebook is totally unacceptable,” says Murray.
Digital Sky’s CEO Milner presents a cleaner image to the world but is also very close to Putin, regularly attending meetings with Usmanov and the Russian president. DST is heavily invested in Silicon Valley including investments in Twitter, Groupon and many young startups.
Facebook’s reliance on DST was not just about getting Russian money. It gave the social network access to the Kremlin and the Russian digital market. “If Facebook wants to be successful in Russia, DST can bring a lot to the table besides knowledge. DST is close to the government there, the source said, and while outright involvement (or obstruction) from the Russian government is highly unlikely, if Facebook wants its business to go more smoothly, DST can help,” a source close to DST told CNET.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov who is indirectly invested in Facebook.
Facebook has many business reasons to supports conservative voices but it remains an open question how much they knew about Russia’s interference in 2016.
Silicon Valley is increasingly concerned about aggressive Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice antitrust investigations over “unfair or deceptive”, monopolies and online data collection and use, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and spam. According to Forbes, the FTC is known in Silicon Valley as the “Federal Technology Commission”. From a business perspective Facebook’s support for conservative allies makes some sense but that they fly in the social network’s public values could harm the company.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors and FBI agents is “zeroing in on how Russia spread fake and damaging information through social media and is seeking additional evidence from companies like Facebook and Twitter about what happened on their networks,” according to Bloomberg.
Mueller’s focus on social media is said to be “red hot” and Facebook, Twitter and Google executives may be called to testify in front of congressional committees as well. More troubling is a notion first floated by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Facebook, Twitter and Google may indeed be the scene of the biggest political crime in history. This would expose the tech giants to extraordinary examination by prosecutors and ironically the very regulation they may have sought to dissuade with their political efforts.
You may also like ...
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy! @Cali_livin