I didn’t see this story here and this is one of those things that everyone should know. The original story is at the Washington Post, but it’s behind a paywall. Crooks and Liars has the story.
When Magomed Musaev, a Kremlin-connected tycoon, gathered friends in New York to celebrate his 60th birthday, he was joined at the head table by top executives from the Forbes Media Group. According to people who attended the June event, the revelers also included American tech founder Austin Russell, 28, who had recently announced that he was leading an $800 million deal to buy the storied media business.
Days before the party, however, Musaev had told associates that he was the Forbes buyer and had sealed the deal of a lifetime, according to five audio recordings and one video recording obtained by The Washington Post in which he discussed the deal.
“I just bought global Forbes,” Musaev told one of his associates, according to the material, referring to the Forbes Media Group, which includes the U.S. edition of the magazine. “You understand when you have in your hands the key to the most authoritative global brand, this key will give me access to anyone.”
Musaev repeated the claim again and again, according to the tapes. In one of the recordings, the videotape reviewed by The Post, he called Russell “the face” of the deal and insisted his own involvement be kept quiet. “I am doing it more subtly,” he said, according to the recording. “You understand,” he said at one point, “I am not working with a sledgehammer, nor with a scalpel, but with a laser.”
Other than the cynical thought that went through my head that TFG will probably be back on the Forbes 400 list pretty soon for the business world this is a very serious problem.
And quite likely for the political world as well, given how much money/corporations/politics are connected these days.
Update: Rec list? Really? Um, well, thanks. Can we have a real journalist write a story on this please? I throw mud.
I note that a couple of people have taken exception to the “Be Afraid” note at the top and they raise valid points. That I disagree doesn’t make their points any less valid, or any less correct. But away from Daily Kos, in the business world, Forbes is still taken seriously. I know a lot of people who read it, and their businesses subscribe to it. I know how much of an investment they’ve made into infrastructure and their own digital footprint. I worry about their influence becoming more focused on Russian approved issues, and Russia’s views on other parts of the world that do not line up with our own. I worry about less-discerning readers taking things as gospel and the less-discerning reader is an unfortunate majority.
There needs to be a light shone on this transaction, this ownership, and it should be in fifty-foot letters on every news site, and I’m afraid it’s not. This is not a story that should be broken by me (and in all fairness it wasn’t).
I added a question mark in the title.