What’s with these conservatives and Russians? As reported on MarketWatch …
Chaos has erupted at a conservative think tank after it was revealed that one of its new donors is Len Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born billionaire who owns the Warner Music record label.
Charles Davidson — the founder of the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, a group dedicated to exposing threats by authoritarian regimes to U.S. democracy — said he quit as its executive director upon learning that the Hudson Institute had accepted a $50,000 donation from Blavatnik.
“Russian kleptocracy has entered the donor pool of Hudson Institute,” Davidson said in an exclusive interview with The Post. “Blavatnik is precisely what the Kleptocracy Initiative is fighting against — the influence of Putin’s oligarchs on America’s political system and society — and the importation of corrupt Russian business practices and values.”
Guess who Blavatnik pals around with ...
… Ilya Zaslavskiy, an Oxford-educated policy wonk who also sits on the Kleptocracy Initiative’s advisory council, griped that Blavatnik’s business partners Viktor Vekselberg and Oleg Deripaska have been sanctioned by the US government.
“Blavatnik is an oligarch,” Zaslavskiy told The Post, using a term that has long drawn strenuous objections from Blavatnik’s public relations team.
“It’s amazing how Blavatnik converts philanthropy into political access and influence,” Zaslavskiy said, adding, “It’s a philosophical question: Can you do good things with bad money?”
I remember when these guys were the enemy.