Apparently Donald Trump arranges all his cabinet appointments through RussianDating.com. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain how it happens that everyone he puts forward is sporting a Moscow connection.
In October—two days after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declared that Russia was responsible for hacking Democratic targets to influence the 2016 election—the Trump campaign zapped out a press release claiming that Hillary Clinton was actually the candidate in the race with "close ties" to Russian leader Vladimir Putin and that she had "sold out American interests to Putin in exchange for political and financial favors." One piece of supposed evidence for this claim was that Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian billionaire oligarch and Putin ally, made a donation, through his company, to the Clinton Foundation. ...
But even though Trump the candidate asserted that Clinton's association-via-foundation with Vekselberg was a problem and a sign she was too cozy with Putin, Trump the president-elect has welcomed into his administration a businessman with a much tighter and more financially significant relationship with Vekselberg: Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor who has specialized in distressed assets and who is now Trump's pick for commerce secretary.
Russian oligarchs (looking for a place to stash their embarrassingly large wads of cash outside the country against the day when someone noticed they were running off with everything not nailed down) made a bid to take over the Bank of Cyprus. However, European regulators balked at giving a crowd of kleptocrats their own private money laundering system/tax haven.
Wilbur Ross came to the rescue. Ross gave most of the oligarchs a buyout, leaving himself primary stockholder of the bank and No. 2 in Vekselberg’s' conglomerate.
When the bank’s new board was announced it included Ross, along with a representative for Vekselberg, and Vladimir Strzhalkovskiy—another Putin associate and former KGB member. To round things out, they also brought in a former CEO at Deutsche Bank who was also a Putin-pal.
Asked about Ross' dealings with Vekselberg, the Trump transition office did not respond to a request for comment.
Is there any question about what Trump’s team will say? Vekselberg’s company giving money to the Clinton Foundation, which was used for charitable purposes, is obvious corruption. Vekselberg working with Ross to put millions in the commerce secretary’s pocket … that’s just business.
But it’s easy to see why Trump wants Ross in the cabinet. People who have experience in running offshore banks designed to hide Russian investments could be extremely valuable to the Trump administration.