Grubstakers - Episode 19: Oleg Deripaska feat. Talia Lavin

Episode Date: June 11, 2018

Oleg Deripaska certainly has more Ivan Drago then Apollo Creed in him. This week we are joined by Talia Lavin. Learn about Oleg’s many oligarch activities, his role in the Russian aluminium wars and the 2016 US elections. Enjoy it!

Hey listener, thanks for checking out Grubstakers, a podcast about billionaires where we ask the question, is there such a thing as a good billionaire? This week we got Oleg Deripaska in our hot seat. Russian oligarch, aluminum magnate, and a man about town who spends time on his yacht with women of the night with Russian politicians. So sit back, relax, and enjoy some Grubstakers. I think we disproportionately stop whites too much. I taught those kids lessons on product development and marketing, and they taught me what it was like growing up feeling targeted for your race.

I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. You know, I went to a tough school in Queens and they used to beat up the little Jewish boys. You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. Hey, hey, ho, ho, welcome to Grubstakers, another exciting episode. We're very excited. We have our second guest this week.

But before we get to it, Sean P. McCarthy here, joined as always by my friends. Yogi Poliwal. Steve Jeffers. Andy Palmer. And this week, we are talking about Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and we are very happy to have, as we mentioned, our second guest, a columnist at the Village Voice, and she's very popular on Twitter, chick underscore in underscore Kiev on Twitter.

It just rose off the tongue. Talia Levin, thank you so much for being with us. Yeah, I'm psyched. Bringing a touch of feminine energy to the podcast. Lavin. If there's one thing that we have been missing, it has been feminine energy. Though I would like to note that I did...

I'd like to think I brought some. Not enough. We all brought something to the table. I also want to apologize on the podcast because the last time I shouted you out, Talia, I said Lavlin. You know, I've had worse as far as at least you didn't call

me Levin it sounds Jewier but it is not in fact my name it happens all the time Levine I'm like you're looking at my Twitter handle you're quoting me we have the daughter of US Senator Carl Levine on today we're very excited

but yeah no actually this is great and We have the daughter of U.S. Senator Carl Levine on today. Oh, my God. We're very excited. But, yeah, no, actually, this is great. And we're very excited to jump right into Oleg Deripaska. If you are familiar with the Russian meddling in the U.S. election, you might have heard that name maybe once or twice on MSNBC. But he's an absolutely fascinating individual. And we did some very good research on this episode. But I will say researching a Russian billionaire is harder perhaps than some of our other episodes because the journalists we are stealing from keep mysteriously disappearing.

They keep tripping next to their windows. Yeah. They commit suicide in their apartment hallways with a silenced pistol. From the back of their head. Yeah, like you get shot eight times after whatever. But Oleg Deripaska, Forbes as of June 2018. All right, we know the song, Andy. This is what Andy does instead of research.

I love that this is a German band also. I didn't know they were German. Really? Genghis Khan. This was in Eurovision. Right. Andy showed me this band and I went, I want less answers about this group. Sorry, I laughed like a gremlin. You about this group. Sorry, I laughed.

You're totally fine. Yeah, they won. They won their way into our hearts. That was a protest song about the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. They knew. In 1989. The band members have all died

of radiation poisoning since they released that song. Moscow, Moscow. But anyway, so Oleg Deripaska. We'll give you a quick overview, then we'll get into the bio. Forbes, as of June 2018, estimates his net worth at about $3.5 billion. He was at one time in 2008 estimated by Forbes as worth $28 billion. He was at that time the ninth richest man in the world.

But he lost most of his fortune due to the 2008 financial crisis. And, you know. The real victim. That's right. That's right. He went on a bit of an acquisition spree. He ran up a lot of debts. And then he actually got bailed out by the Russian state.

So he has a very close relationship with the Russian state. Washington, D.C. Right. And just like overview of that, a U.S. diplomatic cable in 2006, which was reported on by the Associated Press, described him as, quote, one of among the two or three oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis and more or less a permanent fixture on Putin's trips abroad.

But since then, he has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in April 2018 for meddling in the 2016 election. And I would just like to quote the Treasury here, just to give you a bit of what the U.S. government thinks about this guy. Deripaska has been investigated for money laundering and has been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering. There are also allegations that Deripaska bribed a government official,

ordered the murder of a businessman and had links to Russian organized crime. And of course, it's really fucked up when someone does that without CIA backing. I mean, the Russian word for businessman is businessmen. And it really is such a... I used to be so intimidated by learning Russian. Businessmen. Also, business lunch is business lunch.

Turns out it's just do a Yakov Smirnov voice. But businessman is such a nebulous term because it has all of these shady associations with it. You know, if someone's a businessman, businessman, it means, like, you know, they probably have some shady shit going on or in their past.

Is the Russian word for journalist tombstone? No, it's journalist. And then you make the gunshot sounds. Journalist. It's journaliste. And then you make the gunshot sounds. Journaliste. It's tragic. I know. It's really fucked up. Slava Geroem. R.I.P.

Glory to the heroes. This podcast is dedicated to the memory of Anna Politkovskaya. And the career of Yakov smirnoff we keep wondering about like what will be the episode that finally ends our podcast and uh you know i think even money the one where we insult the russian mafia and the russian government yeah i called andy a few days ago and i was like hey we got this weird russian rss feed listening to us and he's like that's probably fine i'm like it probably, but it might not be. So we should probably keep an eye on this.

Oh, I would like to actually take a chance to pitch our show to advertisers because we don't really get, we get about 100 some listeners, but the majority of those- Sean, stop bragging. The majority of those are billionaires or they're attorneys.

So these are extremely well-paid people and they can afford your products. So I think you should have us read your copy on the air. Yeah, I mean, like just someone that just delivers orchids by drone to your bedside table.

Like, pants made of the skin of peasants. Yeah, all kinds of... Face cream made out of diamonds and quail eggs. Who knows? Yeah. Crazy amount of stuff.

We should advertise the opposition research firm that is going to take us down on our own podcast. Just like Lennon said, we're going to hang ourselves with the rope that we sell them or something.

I'm going to use my Twitter to leverage this to at least 112 listeners. Yes! Thank you. You know, work that social. SEO baby. All right, so Oleg Deripaska,

he's the founder of a company called Basic Element. It was originally Siberian Aluminum. Through that, he owns about a 48% stake in Rusal, which is the second largest aluminum producer in the world as of 2016. We mentioned about the sanctions. The U.S. Treasury has said that if Oleg kind of steps down, sells off his stake, these kinds of things, they might be willing to reconsider the sanctions. But they have currently extended them so that they will come into effect in October of this year. But we will see if they delay that further or what happens.

But I guess, oh, I guess like we should kind of start with his biography. And then we get to talk about a very interesting period in Russian history. The Aluminum Wars, the 1990s, and just how kind of Oleg was able to become for a time the richest man in Russia. He was born in 1968 in Dzerzhinsk. Dzerzhinsk. Thank you. I'll be the Russian word pronouncer. I'm just gonna say thanks. There are two minutes. Business man. Business man. He grew up in Ust-Labinsk. That's the reason I left Soviet Union. So, Ust-Labinsk, it's an interesting, it's a little town in

Krasnoyarsk-Krai, which is like an area of Russia that's not Moscow. So, here's a little quote from a site called Subisadnik.ru, basically talking about what has Oleg Daripaska done for his hometown since making good.

They're like, well, he paved the main street, and he's making a school. But then there's a reader wrote in and described her quality of life. After it rains, I can't leave the house because of fear of drowning in huge puddles or breaking my legs. In the district clinic, in order to take a blood test,

we must line up at 4 a.m. as there are no test tubes. It's a really poor rural area and one thing that's sort of interesting is that it has a a strong uh community that identify as cossacks um so that's like a russian cultural minority ethnic minority um kuban it's the cossacks of the kuban region and they've um settled there it's like contested but there's been a cossack presence there since 1696 um the kuban region

known for their cigars yes the kuban for cigars but but yeah so jerry poska himself like had a pretty rough upbringing also uh interesting fact about cossacks um they did a horrible thing to woody allen's grandmother they they were betrayed, actually, by the British government after World War II. And this led a British secret agent by the name of Alec Trevelyan to kind of go rogue and abduct the former Soviet GoldenEye satellite in an attempt to destroy the world financial system. Unfortunately, he was stopped outside of a large satellite base in Cuba. And then what happened, Nate? Pierce Brosnan had sex

and then the rest of his movies weren't very good. I heard it was hard for the CIA to stop them because the opposition was playing as Oddjob and he's actually shorter in the n64 version so it's you can't really get a shot at oh yeah yeah i hated all of that not enough drops and not enough punch lines yeah but anyways i'm sorry i cut you off uh please we were talking about kind of he had a hard life growing up uh i only did kind of basic Wikipedia research on this, but from what I understand, his mother had to leave and get an engineering job.

She was a widow, and she had to leave when he was young, so he was raised by his grandparents. Yeah, and then their grandparents, when they died, the state seized their homes, their home as part of a program for breaking up Cossack settlements, according to an FT article. He moved from relative to relative for seven years, he says, until his mother returned and then went to live in a nearby town.

Anyway, so yeah, Ust-Labinsk isn't like a glamorous place to grow up. I read that Zhezhinx is one of the most polluted, populated areas in the world. Sounds right. Yeah, like they had a bunch of chemical industries that packed up and left in the 70s. All right, we get it. Wait, I feel like you should have done that while you were summarizing the plot of the plot. Yeah, I think that would have been great.

Well, that would have required Andy to do two things at once. Just one thing correctly at once, actually, is what we're really saying. But I think... Most underrated Bond thing, by the way. Not bad. What's sad is how long I let Andy talk

while intently listening before I was like oh he's fucking around right now nothing he's saying is important no I like it's great if we explain as many complicated things at once while talking over each other and some of them are real and some of them are not

listeners love that this is going so smoothly, guys. That's why we pull hundreds of listeners. Hundreds of listeners. Yeah, hundreds of listeners. Literally nines of listeners. But that's, no, the governing philosophy of... All right.

Governing philosophy of the podcast is we say fake facts, but we also act like we meant to say them so that people don't know when we're just lying or misinformed. Oh, just an interesting random fact. Both of his grandfathers fought against the German invasion in World War II, and one of them was killed in battle. The other one returned. Was a coward.

That's literally Stalin. That was Stalin's stance. One of his grandfathers stood up at the end of Enemy of the Gates to expose the position of the German sniper because he was jealous of his friend cucking him. So you guys have watched movies. That's a thing I learned. Not that many.

Not that many, not even good movies. That's the only sad part about this. Hey, GoldenEye is the best James Bond movie. Arguably. Anyways, let's talk about Oleg Deripaska. At age 11, again, Wikipedia, he got a job at the plant where his mother worked. He was, quote, an electrician's apprentice

doing maintenance on electrical motors. And, you know, it's good... What a country. It's good that someone following Marx, a government following Marxist philosophy understood his strong endorsement of child labor. But so he worked as an electrician's apprentice at age 11, and then in 1985, he enrolled in physics

in Moscow State University. So MGU is like, it's the best school in Russia. Right. Harvard of Russia. State school. Russia. You know, it's like less condemning to be a state school when you live in a state-dominated...

You know, it's like, what other schools are there? Right, right. But it was the best. It's the best school. It's best. Be best. I do like the idea of talking shit to Oleg Deripaska about, like, you went to a state school.

He's like, they were all state schools. What are you talking about? Whatever. Fallback. Didn't get into Moscow University. M.U. But so he enrolls in physics in 85, but then he gets conscripted into the Soviet Army.

He serves in the strategic missile forces in Siberia from 86 to 89. Then he goes back to college. He graduates with a physics degree and honors in 93. But of course the Soviet Union collapsed during that time period, which made it impossible for him to continue with his original

goal, which was to continue his studies as a theoretical physicist. Because there's just so much freedom. I mean, so the term for the 90s in Russian is Lichia Divnostia. It's like the wild 90s. Right. It was just this period of like post-state collapse.

Right. Everything was up for grabs. Gangsters took a lot of it, which we'll get into and it's hard to overstate just like how anarchic it was how disorienting and a lot of

people were really millions and millions of people really struggling to survive when power structures crumble the people with the most power seem to seize the most power as well and in Russia's with the most power seem to seize the most power as well. And in Russia's case, it's... The most violent people. Right.

So, I guess... Plus, all their bands were abandoning their synthesizers. People started supporting Bernie. It was a swint of shit. Yes. Bernie Madoff. We just want to make that clear. Mark Ames was doing child sex tourism.

We can cut that. I mean, you're not wrong oh no um i'm glad we had matt tybee to to be there and uh have sex with unwilling russian women for the sake of journalism you know this is interesting because it's like and maybe this is like my male perspective but i've kind of forgiven matt Matt Taibbi. But obviously I wasn't affected. I have no idea what he did over there. But Mark Ames, I'm like, you're a complete scumbag. But of course, Matt Taibbi wrote a book with the dude and knew what the dude was doing.

I'm like, that book is disgusting. Oh, I'm sure. It's just hard. It's hard. He's like, yeah, Russian girls will always say no and no and no, but they really mean yes. And I'm like, hmm. What is this book? So, yeah, yeah.

So it's called The Exile. Matt Taibbi, who's a great journalist for Wall Street and who I was. Is a Rolling Stone journalist who did a lot of stories on Wall Street and helped me and some other people kind of gain our understanding of the U.S. financial system, was in the 90s and early 2000s involved in setting up a paper in Russia called The Exile with Mark Ames, who's another leftist journalist. And they lived kind of a...

Sex pat. Right. So it's this thing where like um sexploitation all all american male journalists were heavily influenced by hunter s thompson but they didn't really get the empathy so they kind of thought like the whole thing was about you know like fucking random strange and doing drugs and uh sexually harassing their secretaries there you go it i i will say just briefly in his defense, and I'm going to use a Woody Allen voice

because that's how I sound. An independent journalist did... Woody Allen voice is a good voice to adopt when defending sex criminals. An independent journalist did call a bunch of women that he worked with and confirmed that it didn't happen. It was...

Now do it in a Cosby voice. It was a... this just turns into a muppet uh it was a satire on the yeltsin years and he was making up all that stuff and like although a female washington post reporter also came out with a rejoinder saying like they mercilessly harassed me implied that i was sleeping with my bosses uh and used the pages of their magazine to smear me as basically someone who was sleeping around for my career, which was just

like not true. Wow, what piece of shits. No, I'm not. Tybee does do a good screed, but you know, people do good screeds that haven't glorified rape, so that's cool. I'm the

political correctness correspondent for this episode it's czar czarina no I just I would say I'm anti-rape but if you wanna I think Sean and Andy are torn on that sentiment

if you wanna stick out the opposing position I think there's a lot of gray area. Jesus Christ. You know what's also gray? Aluminum. Let's get back on topic. I've never backed down from a position so quickly.

No, I like making it seem like everyone who disagrees with me is pro-rape. That's my tactic as a feminist not selling out feminism just telling the truth but um like and so we'll get back to olig in a second but i do think their story is interesting in that they are exemplary of a lot of americans who went over to russia in the 90s americans and just other people around the world for you know essentially know, essentially sex tourism, but also exploitation, where one statistic I heard from a documentary I watched was, within four years of the collapse of the Soviet Union, 75% of all industry in Russia had been privatized. And that's 100% state control to 75% private control within

four years. And a lot of that was sold off to foreign interests like we'll talk about some you know London-based firm that comes into the Oleg Deripaska story but it's essentially like you know if you're say a nerdy American you can go over and do sex tourism and spend your money and buy up distressed resources from people who are starving and being thrown out of their homes at, you know, fire sale prices. So it is just the 90s in Russia is a story of horrific economic mismanagement, corruption, exploitation, you know, whatever else.

And, yeah, Mark Ames fits into that story. To be managed by self-rule. The government by an elite group is superior. The government for, by group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. The story of the wild 90s is like it's the big

kahuna collapses and then what the vacuum in its wake just attracts the worst people. The worst people. Everyone from the predators to the moochers. And in some ways this is a story of that. At least the worst people all around the globe from the predators to the moochers right and um and in some ways this is a story of that yeah at least the formation of deripaska certainly yeah so i

guess we can talk a bit about the aluminum wars and oligarpa and uh oligarpa is rolling that. So basically, as we mentioned, he wanted to go on to study theoretical physics. He wanted to do productive, good things for humanity, but the free market had other ideas. It would have been hard to be in a PhD at that time. That didn't mean you had to go into raw metals trading with organized criminals.

Right. Probably a middle ground, like smuggling cheese or something. Right. That is where a lot of the stories of, like, PhDs driving taxis came from. In Russia? That time. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a stereotype, but, like, that idea. Yeah, totally. I mean, it was like, who gets out, right? Right. You know, the elite, the educated people with drive, and then they come here, and it's like... And drive. And drive.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, and just like so... But in fairness. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. It is time to reawaken this industrial giant, to get government back within its means,

and to lighten our punitive tax burden. Let's talk about these aluminum wars. Right. And we mentioned 75% privatized within four years. It turns out when you sell off all these state assets, having connections within state government helps you get first in line when you sell off all these state assets having connections within state government helps you get first in line when it comes to buying up state assets which is why corruption became so endemic in this period um well corruption had been endemic but it

got more lucrative right um but so basically he he's uh olig der pasca is not able to go on to study theoretical physics anymore so instead what he does is in 93, he sets up a commodity trading company, VTK. They mainly focused on metals. And he sets it up with other physicists, engineers, rocket scientists. It's kind of like the phenomenon you've seen in the U.S. where a lot of smart mathematical people are like, oh, we can just make financial models instead and make more money. And he starts representing different companies that were buying

and selling raw materials. I'm getting this from Wikipedia. Citation needed. Right. I just don't want to get Angela Nagel. Just click through to the source, man. I know. It's not that hard. It's weak. But so he did, you know, arbitrage, where, like, they buy up, you know, mainly aluminum

at low Russian prices and sell them abroad. They did it through Estonia, I guess, because, like, Russian export licenses were kind of in disarray during this period. But so what happens is almost all of the profit that he makes from this export venture is dumped back into buying an aluminum smelter

in what is it, Sayangursk? Sayanagursk. That reminds me of the saying in the aluminum industry and the aluminum trading industry which is uh he who smelter delta i actually everyone else is just shaking their heads so my gremlin laugh just dominates the audio feed you know i read some amazing quote about the the

through us about um is it russian metal being sent out through Estonia. But it was like, you know, Estonia didn't have any metal plants. Oh, really? And yet it became one of the largest metal trading countries in the world. To be one of the things like in his early career is that like with the fall of the soviet union he was dealing a lot of metal but it wasn't until later of his career that he started putting money into actual like aluminum production uh because no one was really like mining it anymore like that it all collapsed people were just moving around stuff and he was basically um being something of a parasite.

He was brokering deals between other transnational... Right, right. Stephen, hold the mic closer. Oh, sorry. So wait, so he was being, like, what, a financier to, like, metal deals at one point and then started selling his own stuff? Is that what you're saying? Well, no, he started investing in actual aluminum production,

but before that, it was just basically moving things around and skimming money but yeah so the i mean just to give you an idea like so russia because the economy had collapsed um you could buy a ton of aluminum in russia and then sell it for for 70 and then sell it for $1,600 abroad. So that's how big the profits were. And that's why aluminum in specific became this nexus of the aluminum wars. I do like- Is there a drop for the aluminum wars? No.

I do a whole bunch of drops in post. So if you've got something in mind, let me know. Like aluminum wars. And that's next song about metal i'll find something heavy metal well actually uh speaking of um you know how i was playing moscow earlier and you're talking about heavy metal is that what you were doing heavy metal? Is that what you were doing? Heavy metal. Aluminum.

Arbitrage. Aluminium. Pricing. Oligarch. One of the lightest metals. Oh, damn it. Five. All right, six on the periodic table. Thirteen.

No, don't do any lyrics. We don't want to be sued by them. Moscow. Did you know that the real most common saying in the aluminum industry is, actually, it's pronounced aluminum. That's actually how the war started. That's what the war was over.

I mean, do you guys want to know how to say aluminum in Russian? Aluminum. Wait, let me just double check that that's correct. It's quickly becoming my favorite language. Do you have to take twice as long to say it? What a country.

No, I'm wrong. It is... No. Yeah. Oh, I just wish you said it, but slower. I really wish... Oh, okay. It's Der it, but slower. I really wish. Aluminum. Oh, okay. It's Daddy Pascal.

Yeah, cool. So at one point, Oleg gets from a middleman type to a 20% owner of the company. And this kind of goes into the organized crime thing. So basically, as we mentioned, he puts all his profits back into this aluminum smelter at, where is it? Sayangors? Sayangors. This was where he gets involved with

a man named Michael Chornay. Chornay. It just means black. Interesting. It's gotta be black. But so in the early 90s Michael Shorne

starts buying stakes in a London metals trader named Transworld to amass, according to the Financial Times, they did this to amass control over Russia's collapsing aluminum sector and at the time he got Mr. Shorne, Derpaskadid.

Chornay. Chornay. He got him to give him his backing to become the general manager of this aluminum plant, which was at that time the only facility in Russia outside of Transworld's control. And you were mentioning, essentially, that had he not been able to

get that backing and tried to take over the smelter, he might have just ended up in a river somewhere? Yeah, this was a quote from a Russian language analysis of Jerry Poska's connection with organized crime. So the Chornys were like sort of

they were brothers and they were organized criminals. They were part of the Russian mafia. Jerry Posko was sort of their clean cut front man. Was he the face? He was the face. I mean, look at it. It's so grizzled.

You know, he was the physicist, cleaner than anyone. I do like when the guy who has been accused of ordering the murder of a businessman is your clean face. Well, this was earlier than before. But yeah, he basically was their front man for taking over the Sayanogorsk plant. And yeah, but yeah, this Novaya Gazeta investigation was like, he showed up and this Muscovite showing up in a room full of Sayansk metallurgists was as noticeable as a pimple on a face. What is a Muscovite?

Someone from Moscow. Oh. Because hecovite? Someone from Moscow. Oh. Because he was born like 250 miles outside Moscow. Well, yeah, but. And I guess he went to school there. Yeah. It's like he went to school there. Yeah.

He's like the big city slicker. Yeah. Okay. And then further that article said like, you know, if he hadn't had the backing of the Chornys and was showing up trying to take over this plant, he would have wound up as a body in the Yenisei River. So there are two other organized crime figures that are connected to him. There's no such thing as a mafia.

In the course of research for this article, we decided we should try to send Andy to Odessa Beach in New York, which is apparently where the Ukrainian mob has a hangout. I got confused and went to Brighton Beach. But a lot of Jamaicans instead. But, oh, so anyways, so two other organized crime figures that were with links to organized crimes are Sergei Popov

and Andre Malevsky. God, I feel like fucking Rachel Maddow. Malevsky. Malevsky. God, I feel like fucking Rachel Maddow. Malevsky. Malevsky. And that is how this went down. Hey there, I'm Chris Hayes from MSNBC. But so basically Popov was connected with Cherne.

They were close to... They were close to Yeltsin's chief of staff. Yeltsin, Yeltsin. Yeltsin. Yeltsin. It's like Yelt. Yeltsin's chief of staff. And then sin.

You're really killing the atmosphere I'm trying to create here. They were close to his chief of staff, so they kind of cleared the way. But they have been connected to... Anton Milevsky was connected to the... Ismailovsky Organized Crime Group? Ismailovsky.

Allegedly. Allegedly. And Mr. Popov was alleged... Popov. Alleged in court to be a leader of the Podolsk organized crime. Podolsk. This is amazing. This is like me being able to correct Scarlett Johansson's terrible Russian accent in real time.

I am the Red Sparrow. No, that's Jennifer Lawrence. Oh, is that? Okay. I couldn't watch that movie because really bad Russian accents just make me want to die. Holly is a professional fact checker.

What's the worst Russian accent? Like, if you had to rank them, what's worst? I mean, I have to say Scarlett Johansson is the Black Widow. Like, it's just one of the... Yeah. I almost just, like, it's just one of the, yeah. I almost just like

walked out of an Avengers movie. Damn. Just like, I can't handle it. Yeah. Alright, you can cut that.

The mood is set, Palmer. But, so basically, with my horrible pronunciations aside, you get the idea where he went into business with this Cherne guy or whatever, who in turn had connection to at least two

Russian mobsters, who in turn had connection to the at the time president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, through the chief of staff, who whom's daughter, Oleg Deripaska, would later in 2001 go on to marry. Polina Deripaska. Right. So it's essentially like he was able to make some... Two years and about 5,600 ingested bottles of vodka later. By Yeltsin himself.

He was able to make some money through this kind of exploitation of the collapse of Russia, but it was really his political connections that allowed him to become for a time the richest man in Russia. And I guess we can kind of go through what followed unless there's anything else with the aluminum wars, because it is a very fascinating period. So I tried to find as much as I could about Deripaska and the aluminum wars. One thing that's sort of funny is so the Soviet term for World War II

is the Great War for the Fatherland. Or the Great Patriotic Wars. The Great Patriotic War, Great War for the Fatherland. There are different translations of the Russian term. But during the aluminum wars, which was just this all out gang warfare, contract killings, assassination. The papers started calling it the Great Patriotic Aluminum War, which I thought was interesting. Here's the FT in 2001. The Koch brothers were involved in both of them.

Aluminum Stalin did nothing wrong. Well, you know, Stalin was his assumed name and it means like son of steel. Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah. Anyway, so here's the FT in 2001 describing the aluminum wars. When state control withered with the demise of the Soviet Union, turf battles, political meddling,

and alleged contract killings convulsed Russia's aluminum sector. After the dust settled early last year, the winner was clear, Oleg Deripaska, a 33-year-old former metals trader who now serves as general director of Russian aluminum.

And then here's another description from one of my favorite guys, Mark Gagliotti, who is the world's expert on Russian organized crime. He, in this article in The Guardian, talked about the aluminum wars. The notorious aluminum wars of the early 90s for example saw thugs occupying factories a string of murders and lurid accounts of organized crime activity across the metal industries recent research suggested uh suggests that the contract killings related to those wars

likely numbered in the thousands um and about sounds like the free market was working yeah hell yeah um but so recently there was a trial um like i guess this was in uh 2012 um a guy named Vladimir Tatarinkov, otherwise known as the Tatar, a Siberian gang leader, was sentenced to prison for being behind potentially dozens of contract murders during the aluminum wars um and he so allegedly when so here this is a translation from commerçant.ru which is like a russian business paper um so oleg deripaska was sent out to the cyanagorsk plant this is in siberia he was sent from moscow to siberia um other accounts are like basically it's a miracle that he survived being sent out there um so tatarenkov was uh representing a different like um a different oligarch anatoly bicov and fighting deripaska and the Chornys for control of the Sianogorsk plant. And this is from Kommersant. So Tatarinkov, that's the Tatar, the notorious assassin.

Several times phoned Deripaska and threatened him. In April 1995, in Moscow, members of Tatar's gang committed an attempt on attempted murder on the commercial director of the San Agorsk plant, Valery Tukarev. The businessman

was seriously injured, but he could not be finished off. The killer's gun jammed. So he dived to his back because he knew if he got shot in the butt he would recover faster yeah i mean so it's interesting this is the and and and that attack on the sanagorsk plant is like referenced in the ft and and other things but yeah it was it was like definitely dary poska was largely on the sidelines, but like was ultimately,

you know, personally affected by the ruthless killings. Right. So, and like Dary Poska has himself admitted to paying protection money or, you know, being forced to pay protection money. And then,

uh, Michael Cherney or whatever, Mikhail. One thing Dary Poska realized after this is when people are on the mattresses, they're not making money. Derry Poska was able to restructure his business

after talking to a complicit therapist who got a vicarious thrill through his lifestyle. But anyways. Later was gratuitously brutally raped for no reason. Really?

Talking about the Sopranos now. I'm hip to the haps. I've never seen it. Yogi and I were going to watch it together, and then Yogi was like, oh, well, I'm going to meet with my girlfriend tonight, and then I watched six seasons on the phone. Andy and Yogi were going to watch it together,

and then Yogi was like, no, actually, I don't like you. Anyways. So, and that period in Russian history is very fascinating to me because again you know all these people uh at least in the west talked about how you know introducing free markets and democracy or whatever would lift the lifestyles of all these people and instead you know this massive state sell-off deflation starvation poverty um i forget the exact completely catatonically drunk president right yeah and i forget the exact hilariously drunk president plot twist yeah um but so uh and mikhail uh uh charnay later sued deripaska in

english court it was eventually thrown out um because he said that he should have claimed to Roussel because as part of this... Is that court for people who are just really pedantic about grammar? Because of this protection money, Deripaska was at various points forced to transfer like, I think,

10% ownership to one mobster, 10% to another. I think Cherne was claiming 18 ownership of uh rusal which again second largest aluminum um producer in the world as of 2016 so uh eventually he triumphed over the mobsters is kind of the long story short well that's one story. The Novaya Gazeta investigation I found showed pretty substantial cooperation between Deripaska and the Chornys. And again, Deripaska acting as more of their agent

and then after the fact, kind of claiming himself to be the victim of extortion. Wait, wait, Talia, are you saying that as soon as he thinks he's out, they're going to back it? Oh my God. Yes. But yeah, so with the backing

of Cherne, he becomes the director general of this aluminum smelter in Sajangorsk. Sajangorsk. I got it close enough that I'm going to count that as a win. He became the director general in 94 and then by 1997, the smelter uh

according to reuters became the delta uh became the core asset of his original company siberian aluminum group which is today called basic element basic element is like this big holding company which has you know all these different uh business interests in russia they apparently manage five airports they have a a lot of real estate contracts, aluminum, energy, and then through Basic Element, he controls EN Plus Group, and through EN Plus Group,

he controls 48% of Roussel, which again, second largest aluminum producer in the world. It really feels like you missed an opportunity not to call it Super Cyan, of course. I mean, he was 26 when he became the general manager, so it seems like that's something that should happen. Right? After he watched his son get killed, his business

went Super Cyan. His best friend Krillin was killed on the planet Namek. Come on, Super Cyan Ogorsk is a solid. Right? Laugh at my joke. Yeah.

Or you're sexist. But so I guess we can kind of talk a bit. Wait, before we get out of the mob, I just want to tell my favorite Russian mob anecdote, which is there's this documentary. I think it's on either YouTube or Netflix where they interview members of the Russian mob. And one of them, like, considered himself, like, the artist of the Russian mob leaders and made a crime movie.

And there's just this beautiful scene where they're watching the crime movie. And the mob boss, like, turns to the interviewer, like, pointing at the screen and goes, here's the great thing about my movie. Those people in that movie, they owe me money. The meetings are real. We'll be right back. All right. Well, anyway, so we were talking a bit about how he set up his

Siberian, Deripaska set up his Siberian aluminum group. Um, but what really happens is Rusal, which we've mentioned a couple of times, second largest aluminum producer in the world was formed in 2000 when, uh, Deripaska's Siberian aluminum group merged,

uh, with the aluminum assets owned by a mill house capital, which was owned by Roman Abramovich. Uh, and then Milhouse Capital sold its 50% stake to Deripaska Company Basic Element in 2003. It's the second best Milhouse.

After Richard Milhouse. Suck it to me! Talia just got up and left. No, I didn't. Fake news. Roman Abramovich Talia just got up and left no wait fake news Roman Abramovich sold his 50% stake after Lisa Simpson rejected him

Abramovich is also a pretty big player oligarch these days and recently fled Russia to Israel oh yeah yeah that's like a lot of the oligarchs

were either like had their assets seized by Putin or cooperated with Putin or fled to Israel or London or wherever oh yeah yeah that's like a lot of the oligarchs were either like have their assets seized by putin or cooperated with putin or fled to israel or london or wherever well abramovich decided to pursue a second career of slapping his lover and uh pouring blood on a taxidermy it's a reference to marina abramovich uh noted performance artist spirit cooking and spirit cooking satan we missed the chance to uh interview her when she was at the met for three days for three months um yeah i mean if i can do just like a one second of course summary take all the time you need um yeah i lied when i

said one second if if you take three hours we can release it over three different episodes. Yeah. Amazing. Give us some days off. Yeah, no. So the 90s were this interesting period where like at the towards the beginning of the 90s and through the mid 90s, like you had legit organized crime figures like the Tordes, like Tatarankov and people closely connected with organized crime, you know, gaining this massive wealth, exploiting Russia's collapsed economy. And then by the end of the nineties, like around 98, 99, you had these figures like sort of the more open organized criminals increasingly being marginalized, fleeing, being imprisoned. Um,

and then people who, you know, could at least theoretically present a clean face to the world being like consolidating their power and also at the same time being co-opted by the state. So that the current crop of oligarchs, including Deripaska, is like in some ways, like my comparison is like a king and his nobles like right they all owe fealty to putin they um you know to an extent like obey his whims and you had earlier oligarchs like um khodorkovsky and um berezovsky like being straight up imprisoned um as putin's way of showing like you may be a big fish you may be an oligarch but your money won't protect you right right only i can nasty fish only i can protect you and like you must obey me the state so so the lines between and like you have this phenomenally

corrupt state too so that like the the lines of corruption make the lines between r.i.p talia between crime business and um government like increasingly blurred right but yeah but there is a sense that straight up gang wars were not good for putin's rules you have things just like much more tightly controlled now and and you know and we mentioned it briefly at the beginning, but really the only thing that saved Deripaska from going bankrupt in the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent commodities prices collapse and such was intervention by the Russian state through Vladimir Putin, who was the chairman of VEB, which was a state-owned bank. And he rolled over a four and.5 billion loan to Rusal.

This is according to Financial Times. And the bank also bought nearly one-third of the IPO of Rusal, which went on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2008. So essentially, if he wasn't a puppet of Putin before, he certainly is now because the Russian state can always just call those loans due or you know find whatever criminal pretext to seize the company or whatever else so right that seems to be the like kind of modus operandi of uh both just russia and any um any corrupt authoritarian state is that everyone's doing something illegal so if anyone ever kind of falls to the wayside of what the government wants,

they can just bring up anything along those lines. So according to a Stanford analysis of Russian organized crime, one of the pillars of organized crime are these people which are called the nomenklatura, which is sort of the former Soviet power elite of prominent business members and Communist Party members who

basically had been prominent in the shadow economy under the Soviets and then took over real assets after the collapse of the state um basically um they're um yeah so these people are the ones that straddle the state and crime. And they're increasingly in control. As opposed to the old figures, the mythical figures of Russian organized crime were the vory, the thieves. That's what they're called. And the thieves code was basically

you can never cooperate with the state in any way. Or Silvio Dante will whack you. Yeah, literally. And it was really strong. It was really mythologized. But then after World War II, a lot of these thieves and criminals who had been imprisoned in the gulags like fought for the Russian army for the promise of freedom but Stalin just threw them back in the gulags right and there were these wars called the bitch Wars where the

sort of old-school thieves like tried to kill all of the people who had took up arms for the state, calling them the bitches. Right. Um, but the bitches won. And now you have a world of Russian organized crime where the idea of not cooperating with the state has sort of fallen by the wayside. Um,

and everyone, it's like, uh, Galeotti, Mark Galeotti, who is, yeah. Um, I Gagliotti, Mark Gagliotti, who is, yeah, I really recommend his book,

The Vory, Russia's Super Mafia, which is a great book. But he says, it's not clear whether the old wars have simply died out or whether everyone has become a war. What's interesting, or what's funny is they're like the people who are like, we don't

cooperate with the state. They decided to start a fight with the people who fought in the most brutal and deadly war in probably Russian history and survived. And they're like, yeah, we can beat them. Yeah. That's why they died. Yeah. Like, that's why the bitches won yeah weird thing i don't know if

if you've read about this talia but uh i was reading online somewhere so like a lot of russian gangsters in prison will get like nazi era tattoos like wormock slogans and stuff really and apparently or you know even swastikas but apparently it it's not like, you know, for Nazi ideology it's just a way of signaling their hatred of the Russian state, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But that was fascinating to me. Whoa, whoa, whoa. They're getting Nazi tattoos to be like fuck the Russian state this much?

So wait, Sean, what you're saying is it's heritage, not hate. Yeah, Russian prison tattoos, it's a lot like the yakuza where like you have these identity tattoos right right um and it's very specific like um you get like a russian you know those onion dome churches the number of onion domes on your tattoo is how many murders you've committed right like a tattoo of a spider means you're a thief like there are these really so like um galiadi has this incident of like a naked body washing up on shore

in strelna outside moscow and being identified very specifically as like a formal naval off former naval officer who like went on to commit crimes and break out of prison because of his tattoos. In the old school Russian Vore days, if you got a tattoo that you weren't entitled to, it would be cut out of your skin. It was a naked body belonging to Viggo Mortensen from Eastern Promises.

I mean, more or less. Well, that's like what Promises. I mean, more or less. Well, that's like what I read on like, I forget where I read this. That's the actual Russian word for more or less. More or less. But like basically, yeah, if you went to prison and you had tattoos

that said like you killed somebody or you belong to this or that, they would ask you, do you stand by your tattoos? And, you know, if you say no or they don't believe you you have to physically cut them off of you you know yeah yeah and now that's not so much the case like you can just get it done so as long as you say yes they don't bother you now that's the last you hear from them

now it means you read poetry at open mic yeah hey do you know how to say stand-up comedy in Russian? No, how do you say it? Stand-up comedy. What a country! Stand-up comedy. There are no stand-up open mics in Kiev, I discovered. Oh. I would have loved to do stand-up comedy there.

But so, and so we're kind of mentioning how the state you know particularly when putin takes over in 2000 really cracks down or at least subverts organized crime to its own interests and uh darryl posco we've mentioned married uh yelston's former yeltsin yeltsin's former chief of staff of valentine yamachev um in february 2001 and this really coincides with his takeover Valentin Yamashev in February 2001. And this really coincides with his takeover of the... The daughter of the former chief of staff. Right. Yes, Polina.

Yes. Which would have been like a great power move if Yeltsin was able to form memories. No, but it was a great power move. He keeps meeting him and shaking his head. Nice to meet you. And then he falls down some stairs. No, but I think the fact that the means to consolidate power

is to marry into the government is such a strong indicator of the ways in which the state and the businessmen were combining. And that, of course, accelerated much further in the putin era when the state became a much stronger player and then uh uh its current title rusell's current title is uc rusell and this was formed in march 2007 when it merged uh with its domestic creditor s u a l as well as uh the aluminum assets of a Swiss group called Glencore. And then that really solidified Deripaska's control over almost the entire Russian aluminum industry. And the SUAL thing, Talia, you were explaining that that's kind of how Russians do acronyms or abbreviations.

Yeah, yeah. So like SIBAL is like Sibirsky Aluminum. Like, Rusal, Russian Aluminum. Like, instead of R-A, they just, like, smush together. It's efficient. Yeah, so you get, like, you know, that's why it's, like, Kom in turn for, like, Komunistichesky whatever. Right, right, right.

You know, it's just, like, you smush together the first syllables of words instead of the first letters there seems to be like a thin line of like militaristic thinking of like efficiency and just like um well just basically like the most brute force way to doing it is the way to do it sometimes well yeah well so for example like gazprom, a big Russian gas company, it's like Gazovny Promyshlinist, like gas industry. Wait, that's not how Rachel Maddow pronounces it. Oh, whatever. I just lived in Russia.

No biggie. No, yeah, the way she... It's like I get that Russian phonemes are hard to form. I just have become like a hideous snob about it. That makes sense. I regret it. Roll an R, somebody. Surely.

Let's try that. Next. The only thing she wants to roll is the tanks into Moscow. Chris Hayes from MSNBC. Thanks for watching. I actually like Chris Hayes. No, I like... Motto.

It's just great that he comes after every YouTube video. He goes like, hey, it's Chris Hayes. He follows me on Twitter. This is going to be terrible. Oh, no. We'll cut all this.

He's not going to listen an hour into this episode. Come on. You never know. No, trust me. All of my dirt is like after the 40 minute mark because nobody good idea nobody tolerates 40 minutes of this to hear the dirt that we put out by the way if you have a machine that will find dirt on you on podcasts we will plug it on this

podcast um man did this stuff had a great joke about how a friend of his interviewed a occupy walster guy was afraid the NSA would start tapping him. And Matt was like, the NSA might be tapping your phones, but they are not listening to your podcast. But so I guess we should talk a bit before we run out of time here about Alexei Navalny. Alexei Navalny. Alexei Navalny. Russia's main opposition politician.

He's so hot. Yeah, he's a cute guy. He just has these ice-cold blue eyes that just... Get into it. No, I want to hear more about these eyes. They're so... They're just like... The deep blue?

They're like Lake Baikal, just the Siberian purity. His cheekbones are so high. He has a very devoted wife, but he could get it. That's my take on Russia's opposition politics. By it, she means assassinated. No, he's just in jail. His brother's in jail for life.

He's been jailed like 15 times. Right, he wasn't allowed to run in the most recent election presidential against putin uh because they have these ridiculous ginned up embezzlement charges against him oh all those eyes oh you're in jail tell me more about your troubling views on nationalism people are listening at work and they have to like stand up and give a presentation With like a newspaper In front of their pants Anti-corruption

Pro-transparent government But uh Yeah no I'm hot for Navalny But also He seems like a good dude Well he's an interesting guy but like Also the embezzlement charges the government leveled against him Were like such transparent bullshit They accused him of like stealing tons of lumber and he's like

where would i put it where would i have sold it and they couldn't prove anything but you know show trial right and so he posted uh this or last year um a video about Oleg Deripaska based on information provided by Nastya Rybka who is a escort from Belarus who published a book called Diary of the Seduction of a Billionaire

and the name Nastya Rybka Nastya, yeah, sorry go ahead so her given name is Nastya Vbka translates. Nastya, yeah. Sorry. No, go ahead. So her given name is Nastya Vashkevich. Anastasia Vashkevich. But Rybka means little fish.

She's all about catching, hooking those billionaires. And Nastya? Nastya. No, I mean, that's just a typical. That's the Russian word for nastier. No, it means nasty, doesn't it? No, it doesn that's just a typical... Is that the Russian word for nastier? Yeah. No, it does. It means nasty, doesn't it? No, it doesn't. It's a nickname for Anastasia. Oh, I thought her name was like nasty little fish. No,

I mean, like it does sound, it does have the word nasty in it. Well, I'm taking back my jerk off last night. Jesus. You know, Andy, I don't ever say this,

but too much information sticks the drops, buddy. Yeah. We should have a Nastya Rybka theme. This is a clean family podcast about who eats butt and who doesn't. Speaking of eating butt,

I'm pretty sure Oleg does not eat butt. Firstly, because his wife, Polina, lives in London. He does not live in London. Polina, his wife, I'm pretty sure, is having an affair with Roman Abramovich. There we go. Damn. Abramovich is hot, too.

Everybody, let's stop recording and sell the rights to Netflix right now. No, seriously, though, there's more photos of Polina and Roman than there are of Polina and Oleg on Google. Like if you just look up photos of that couple, you can't find shit. You can't even find like- Someone's not taking back his jerk off. But you can find a whole bunch of photos

of Polina and Roman. So the thing about Roman is he's also hot. He's gorgeous. But with Navalny, like it's his principles that make him hot. Yeah, but Roman got a divorce, and it's like he's committed to this affair. Oh, my God, he's single? Yeah.

What am I doing here? Thank you. I have to go read Diary of the Seduction of a Billionaire. Get to work. Also, Oleg and Polina got two kids, Pyotr and Maria, and they're 16 and 15. No information about them whatsoever. Good, they're minors.

Leave them out of it. Unlike the aluminum minors. Oh. Of Russia. Also children. Minor minors. It is nice that when their father, Oleg, was working at an electronics factory at 11, they will be working at an Instagram account promoting their brand and their yachting or whatever billion-dollar inheritance.

It's nice to say they're the AJ and Meadow. Back to my beautiful friend, Alexei Navalny. I'd go back to Marvin Gaye, but I've already got GoldenEye lined up. I will say, having watched that 25-minute video, I will give him a lot of credit for a man under the shadow of an oppressive regime.

He has a very good social media meme team. He's got like, he'll cut to clips of gangs of New York in the middle to make a point. Right. I think that was There Will Be Blood. No, okay, Yogi and a point. Right. I think that was There Will Be Blood. No, okay, Yogi and I talked about this. I thought it was There Will Be Blood too.

He doesn't have the handlebar in There Will Be Blood. Daniel Day-Lewis in period costume. I thought it was Abraham Lincoln. He doesn't have facial hair in There Will Be Blood. So Navalny he's very modern in his methods and he has this team of young people.

And they have what's called the Anti-Corruption Foundation, basically, to do these investigations. ACF. And they're really fascinating because they don't have FOIA. They don't have access to state files. They have zero cooperation from the government. So they basically do it all in like guerrilla kind of like social media, Google Earth, like using all these public records tools. Right. And they got Medvedev, like they revealed Medvedev's, the extent of his wealth, like via, in part, like looking at the sneakers he was wearing in photos.

Right. And like, yeah, it's just, it's really creative stuff. No, with the Yav. They revealed the true meaning of his name, Bear Man. It looks like. Son of a Bear. Oh, Son of a Bear. Yeah. The Yav is like Son of. I think Bear Man. Son of a bear. Oh, son of a bear. Yeah.

The Yev is like son of. I think it wasn't any of those movies because he doesn't have that handlebar thing and either there will be blood or Gangs of New York or The Crucible or Link. He's only in like six movies. If you're curious, listener,

it'll be in the Tumblr. Yes, thank you. We'll settle this on the internet. But anyways. Go watch Navalny's documentary. It's cool. It's great. I listener, it'll be in the Tumblr. Yes, thank you. We'll settle this on the internet. Go watch Navalny's documentary. It's cool. It's great. I mean, it's 25 minutes. And just to speak to that open source,

he relies extensively on the Instagram of this escort, former escort, Nastya Rybka. Nastya. Nastya Rybka. And her Instagram has a lot of private photos of Oleg Deripaska, where she's on his yacht. And he's accompanied by the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, Sergei Eduardovich Prichodko. Prichodko.

Prichodko. And so he, Sergei, has been in the government since Yeltsin. Yeltsin. Yeltsin. Did I get it wrong again? Yes. You did. God damn it.

And he keeps saying sorry. I'm Russia-splaining. That's my role. Anyway, so Sergei has been in the government since the 90s. He's kind of a fixture. A lot of people allege that he has extensive influence over Russia's foreign policy. And so Nastia, her video, one of them on Instagram, shows him and Oleg having a conversation, essentially about a U.S. figure, I believe, in the State Department.

Victoria Nuland. Yeah, Victoria Nuland. And so they're essentially talking about why she doesn't like Russia or whatever. But so essentially they kind of extend this to first of all show that Oleg is bribing a government official by having him take private trips with multiple escorts on his yacht to Norway

and then flying him out of Norway on his private plane. So, you know, bribery of a government official. I'm looking up Daniel Day-Lewis' facial hair. Oh, my God. How dare he do this to Paulina? I know. I'm so mad about it. Sorry for telling you to do that, Paulina.

I'm usually not mad about billionaires cheating on their wives, but for some reason, Polina's just... She's just so great. But so anyways, the point is, aside from this government bribe, it's alleged that through Oleg, Oleg is through Sergei a conduit to the FSB and the Putin government because they're having this meeting.

Oh, I'm saying this over and over again. Let's get it on. Bribery. It was totally Gangs of New York. This song is actually about the relationship between Russia and business and government. I thought it was about the relationship between Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin.

I'm sorry. Anyways. Apologize. Yes, I'm sorry. Anyways. Apologize. Yes, I'm sorry, everybody. All right, you can stop that. But so basically, Sergei is alleged to be the conduit. They're having this meeting off the coast of Norway

on Oleg's yacht in august 2016 and it's alleged that they discussed you know the 2016 election or whatever and uh we all have our own opinions on the 2016 election i think russian influence happened but it really wasn't that big of a factor my personal opinion that doesn't make it okay but it it is just very interesting where we've kind of mentioned how putin controls these billionaire oligarchs like oleg and oleg was of course paying paul manafort who is currently being charged with felonies by robert mueller and uh um and i guess we can get into manafort as well um but one other fun fact about uh nastia nastia is uh she was apparently part of a topless pro Harvey Weinstein

protest outside the American embassy in Moscow which is just like a weird psyop and I don't really understand maybe I just don't understand the 12 dimensional chess that Putin is playing well I mean the way Navalny did this whole investigation

and what he says it's like we fell into it accidentally because like what happened was the Russian government sent like a bunch of prostitutes dressed as like sexy cops to the Navalny 2018 presidential headquarters

and like Russian state TV, like LifeNews.ru like happened to happen by with cameras just at the moment that, like, Navalny staffers were being harassed by, like, women and fishnets with riding crops. And they,

like, Navalny was trying to track down who did this and found Nastya Rybka and then was like, wait, is that her with Oleg Deripaska? Right, right, from the Instagram, yeah. Like, on his yacht? Are they talking about the stage apartment?

Like, what the fuck? And then he releases this bombshell investigation. And basically alleges, like, he's like, here's just, even if you, like, take out the 2016 election shit. Right. What you have is, like um the deputy prime minister of russia taking a yacht ride with an oligarch and um prostitutes uh they went to this remote like isthmus off norway where there was only one airport the only private plane that was the only planes that were there were

deripaska's private plane um so a ride on a private plane is also a bribe right um and uh they also looked into that's the deputy prime minister's like finances and we're like oh here's him with like million dollar apartments and this huge you know um gigantic like compound and they looked into his official finances and found he made a government salary. And even his wife's... A lot of these guys put all their illicit money in their wives' names.

But even the... That does seem like a dangerous strategy when you are constantly cheating on your wife. Right. But yeah, even his wife's declared income like wouldn't cover even one of the apartments he has so um seems like there's a little corruption in the russian state and we'll be right back hey there i'm chris hayes from msnbc um oh and just uh one more thing about nastia is she's currently in a Thai jail, I believe, for prostitution.

For soliciting prostitution. For soliciting, yes. She had teamed up with this male sex guru, and they claim to be running sex trainings. Mike Myers? No, he's also a Belarusian. I forgot his name because he's not as interesting as Nastia. Mike Myers? Mike Myers.

Yeah, and they were running these sex trainings for Thai sex workers and were arrested for, I believe it was solicitation of prostitution, rape, and conspiracy. So she's facing, I couldn't find any news on her past April, but I think she has been sentenced to a prison term in Thai jail. She put out all these kind of recordings being like, I have information on the 2016 election. Right,

right, right. Please don't let me be extradited to, to, to Russia. Cause like the thing is, if you're a person who makes an oligarch look bad, you could die.

You could, you could die. So free my girl Nastia. Free Nastia, man. I love her. I think she's great. Great lips. There's that one video in that

someone else isn't taking it back. She's a big fan of independent films as made by Miramax and the Weinstein Company. And Alexei Navalny. Yeah. But yeah, and I guess if there's nothing else on that, we can briefly talk about just Paul Manafort

did a lot of lobbying work for Oleg Deripaska, at least from 2005 to 2009. And then he owed a shitload of money to Oleg Deripaska. I'm just quoting from The Atlantic here. In 2008, Deripaska was given $18.9 million in a fund that he had set up uh but he was given 18.9 million by oleg daripaska to purchase black sea cable which was a ukrainian telecommunications company um and then nobody knows what happens happened to the money after that nobody knows

well basically uh again from the atlantic um oleg's lawyers said in 2003... He bought the cable company. Oleg's lawyers say that when Deripaska asked for an accounting of the investment in 2013, Manafort simply didn't respond, which is a boss move. But, you know... Let's try that. Next. Stay with us. And I do respect...

Hey there, I'm Chris Hayes from MSNBC. Thanks for watching MSNBC I do respect The idea of stealing 18.9 Million dollars from somebody connected To the Russian mafia Say what you will about Paul Manafort He's not an afraid person

But basically And if you've Maybe if you are a regular viewer Of MSNBC you are familiar with shortly after Paul Manafort was appointed head of the Trump campaign in 2016. He wrote an email in July 7, 2016, saying that if Oleg Deripaska if he had seen the press coverage about him being Trump's campaign manager. And Manafort said, quote, how do we use to get whole? You know, how do we use this to get us whole to get me out of debt to this guy? So he was at least trying to peddle influence to Oleg Deripaska throughout the 2016 election.

And that is how this went down. I mean, and the thing about... Hey there, I'm Chris Hayes from MSNBC. It's like, so, with a lot of the Russiagate stuff, especially citizen journalism, it's kind of like anyone who has any connection to a Russian oligarch

is therefore directly linked to Putin. And that's kind of bullshit because, as Navalny says, like, yes, the oligarchs pay a certain amount of fealty to the state, but they're not tools necessarily. They have their own agendas. It's just that they can't get to Epri. But the fact that Deripaska has this established channel with

Prihutka, who's like this super high up figure in the government, makes it more credible that he could have been a conduit for information because like just just in and of itself manafort manafort's relationship to derry pasca is more just like an indictment of manafort himself uh and like shadiness but add in the pre-hotka connection and you have like the most qualified person ever to run for president having it stolen from them

I'll be right back to me the issue of thanks for watching MSNBC I can't pause it early the issue of whether it's a determinative factor is almost like moot it's like a story of international corruption it's a determinative factor is almost like moot right it's like a story of international

corruption it's a story of shamelessness it's a story of a presidential candidate who like just has had no regard had and has no regard for the rule of law of course of course or no honor and so but also like also phenomenal global corruption oh yesigarchy and that's like and i'm always happy to to indict that well it's like fuck of course paul mannafort's a fucking vampire and i hope he rots in prison uh probably get part i'd call it one of the most ambitious crossover events between you thought the avengers was an ambitious crossover i mean i think it's like ironic i mean it's ironic that we would use like the total shambles that came in the wake of the collapse of the soviet union to be like things should be more fair but i'm like i think if you

live in a world that's dominated by oligarchs like it's just inevitable that things the barriers between nation states are less important than money and like of course um yeah i mean so in so far as any of this is is important it's it's more the it's like i don't care to what degree i mean first of all the email wikileaks hacks like did matter but also it's like you have don jr being like if it's what you say i love it and like all of the all of these like very clear public record indications that like the trump campaign was perfectly willing to like take take help wherever they could get it from whoever they could get money from from whoever they it from. And so that's what bothers me about it. Right.

And I think the feeling of a lot of left activists on this, or at least my feelings that I've seen kind of reflected other places, is essentially like, I believe it happened. I believe it mattered. I believe these are felonies when we're talking about money laundering or hacking or these kinds of things.

But what worries me is democrats where you have like mark warner uh famous friend of the uh financial industry who helped roll back uh dodd frank you have him tweeting i think yesterday or the day before russia is not our friend you know where it's like this is what they're gonna run on i mean they have elections coming up in november and it's like again you had in, 2010, something like 6 million plus at least foreclosures, many, according to one audit, half of which were fraudulent. You know, so you have like this depressed economy, even though the official unemployment numbers are low, you have people struggling who want, you know, health coverage, they want a decent home,

education prices, etc, etc. So there's just decent home, education prices, et cetera, et cetera. So there's just a worry, I think, among a lot of people that we will try to run on Russia, I think. And if you watch MSNBC, maybe you get the impression that we are running on Russia. Yeah. No, and I think there also is this bias towards information that isn't known and like these crazy charts and you wind up looking like you know a murder investigation wall or whatever where it's like we know what we know right what we know is powerful enough like just rampant errant naked corruption and greed and like run on that run on helping people right give people fucking health care that's what we want and it's like

they're playing up this kind of like greed um or this kind of corruption story that is is definitely like a real corruption story but also they're kind of playing up the the kind of circus of it to distract from also very real purely american corruption um that also kind of touches their own bottom line and their own pocketbooks and so they don't want to rock the boat on that of course and i mean it's like you know we kind of talked about this on the coke brothers episode was they spent more than 880 million dollars in their influence network in the 2016 election and then you have you know russia spending a little over 100k in facebook, and that's what we're going to talk about, which, of course, they both matter, but why are, you know, but anyways, Andy,

if you would summarize our discussion with what Robert Mueller is going to do, I think that would really help out here. I went to a woman's house and she had a Robert Mueller prayer candle. I'm just like, are you fucking kidding me? One cop is going to save America? We need healthcare for all. Abolish ICE. There's so much more work to be done. And like, stop

fixating on a cop named Bob. In fairness, if you search Twitter Robert Mueller sexual fantasy you will have a better day. A lot of people with blue waves in their profiles. But so we're kind of going along, but a lot of interesting stuff. And of course, we can't get to everything.

But I did just want to run through some miscellaneous stuff I learned about Oleg Deripaska. In 2015, he sued Morgan Stanley in New York court for basically insider trading when they short sold one of his companies that they were invested in and working in based on inside information. So he sued them for insider trading against him. Morgan Stanley was eventually cleared.

So there is a good billionaire standing up against the banks but it is uh sad that uh in between uh the guy who has been accused of um ordering the murder of a billionaire of a businessman and morgan stanley i 100 the guy who has been accused of murdering a businessman is the good guy in that story like morgan stanley is fucking vampires and again i mentioned all the foreclosure crisis but morgan stanley all of these people were up to their necks in fraudulent documents used to throw americans out of their homes um we'll talk about that on a future episode but i'm reading chain of title by david day and he's a contributor to the intercept and i think it's the best book on the 2008 financial crisis because in my opinion the

real scandal is millions of fraudulent foreclosures but anyways another fun season i thought i was off topic bringing up the bitch wars no anytime i can rant about wall street i am happy to anytime i can discuss the bitch wars also i've confirmed it was gangs of new york i i i confirmed that earlier didn't you yeah no i don't think you did did you confirm that earlier a didn't you? Yeah. No, I don't think he did. Did you confirm that earlier? A little bit. All right, my apologies. Look, I found the clip. Nice. Yeah.

It is, you know, Alexei Navalny, for all his positive attributes, he does fucking hate the Irish. I love Alexei Navalny. Are you trying to find, like, a negative attribute? Because I think you missed. But so other fun stuff. Sean's a dirty meg uh other fun stuff olig has had his uh visa to the u.s canceled multiple times in 2006 it was

canceled uh allegedly for his ties to organized crime but uh former u.s presidential candidate bob dole and his law firm received 250 000 to000 to lobby for Oleg Deripaska on behalf of him to urge the U.S. to grant him a visa. Wow. Why would you trust Bob Dole to be potent in your defense? Bob Dole likes the Russian mafia. The Russian mafia doesn't exist. Bob Dole doesn't think so.

Bob Dole thinks it's an offensive stereotype. And we were talking about this briefly off mic, but Dara Poska is a friend of Nathaniel Rothschild, who is... This is where the soul Jew on the podcast starts feeling super uncomfortable. Sean's been spending some time on YouTube. I've got the real dirt from John Birch Society.

But so basically, they had George Osborne, who was the United Kingdom Conservative Party shadow chancellor, and Petal Mandelson, who was involved in the Labour government. They had them for like a dinner and a yacht party over near Nathaniel Rothschild's mansion. And this was kind of a scandal in the UK because it's alleged that George Osborne. Well, it's alleged that Mandelson tried to cut Russian sanctions or Russian tariffs or whatever in response. And it's alleged that George Osborne tried to solicit donations for Oleg Deripaska during this meeting. Sorry, solicit donations from Oleg Deripaska for the UK Conservative Party. And then there's a whole thing about Russian money and, you know,

London, the United Kingdom. And like lots of murders of Russians in London going unprosecuted. Right. Because London is a clearinghouse of the world's money, including extremely dirty Russian money. Yes. And speaking of murder, though the less sexy kind, one study said

that austerity, as carried out by George Osborne's government, the one he was Chancellor of the Exchequer for, killed like 20,000 people because of these budget cuts. What? So, you know... Austerity kills. It really does.

And Reaganomics is just like a cuter word for austerity. I really think we should start using that word in the US. That's a thought that I've had a lot. And... But yes. I don't know what worked for Russia.

Mass privatization. That's the moral of this. Yeah. I just like, yeah, the story of just like, I love that there are so many gang wars over aluminum. Oh, yeah.

That formed the central spine of this story. Just imagine like growing up, all of our Huffy bicycles were like built with mass murder. I do. I do like that. George Osborne tried to get money, loot it from the Russian state so that he could take power and loot money from the English state.

And this is what I'm saying. It's all about a transnational order of oligarchic corruption and by that I don't mean Jews I just mean rich people well we lost our followings all our listeners turned it off just now

the Haft mansion is this place in DC that Oleg owns and I don't know why it's known Herbert Haft owned a whole bunch of I don't know why it's known. Herbert Haft owned a whole bunch of drugstores. But anyway, it's a very lavish, ornate mansion. We bought for like $16.5 million.

Incidentally, though, his neighbor, Kellyanne Conway. So that is how tied to money all of these people are. Oleg's American neighbor is Kellyanne Conway. That's beautiful. Right? So I wish that someone would ask her about that when she goes on TV. Why is she ever on TV? I don't know.

I don't know. You know what she might say? Get lost, please. That was the only drop we had of Oleg himself from from like a cnn anchor following him asking questions about this yes had to find a way to work it in yes and if you go on youtube and you search someone has some entrepreneurial individual has uploaded that clip under oleg daripaska owns fake news cnn reporter uh so mega and actually like and i think uh last thing at least I want to talk about is if you go on YouTube and you search like Putin destroys corruption like a boss or Putin like owns. There's one that Putin makes Oleg Deripaska his bitch.

And there's part one and part two. But so basically Oleg Deripaska had a public feud or at least Putin gave him a public tongue lashing in 2009, where what happened, as we mentioned, Oleg's businesses were kind of collapsing. And then the Russian town of Pekalevo, P-I-K-A-L-E. Pekalevo. There you go. Yeah, come on, Sean. So everybody knows that. But so basically what happened was his factory there had kind of collapsed and

it hadn't paid wages to their workers for months and then there was like a lot of protests going on and um uh kind of discontent uh with olig deripaska and the other people who ran the factory so the russian state of course views these kind of street protests as like very scary you know because they of course don't want to be overthrown like egypt or whatever libya etc but so putin flies out there and he like uh has this press conference where he makes oleg daripaska sign this document saying that he will immediately pay all these backdated wages to the workers and you know um and then uh uh the way he does that though is like it's a boardroom full of people and Putin just goes, hey, everyone sign this?

And everyone's like, hey, we all signed. What about Oleg? And Oleg's like, yeah, my sign is like, well, I don't see your signatures. How about you come up here and sign it for me? And then, like, Oleg, like, starts to leave after signing it and Putin goes, give me my pen back. And then it's like, and it's, again, it's funny because, like, as we mentioned, these are all uploaded.

Like, Putin owns corruption. Like a fucking alpha or whatever. And then if you look at the YouTube comments, there's a lot of stuff like, we need Putin to be president of the U.S. to clean up corruption here. And it's just so funny to me because it's like, you guys can hear all the journalist cameras clicking while he's saying this, right? Like, you just listen to the video and it's like so clearly staged as a press conference. But, whatever. That's sort of the essence of Putin as, like, in his image of man of the people. Like, he does these very choreographed press calls and everything and like a lot of it is him being like oh like like it's like a

grandmother from like nizhny novgorod will like call up and be like i haven't been able to leave my house because of the pothole and he's like i will fix your pothole right right he just rips his suit off and like starts filling it in i will you know i will personally intervene, and then it gets fixed. But obviously, these are just photo apps. Yeah, plants. Right. Yeah, and the other thing about the thing that reveals about the Dairy Posca. So I was reading in one of the analyses of why Dairy deripaska has flourished so much under putin

and like part of it is that deripaska employs a hundred thousand people oh my god really yeah oh yeah like 130 000 so that's part of the reason why putin has like allowed him to flourish and so their only public conflict was also about workers right right uh so that's not really incidental yeah basic element of employs over 150,000 people globally, including Russia, Asia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, etc. I mean, when have dissatisfied workers had any political influence in Russia? From your mouth to no God's ears. Can we talk about his Cyprus citizenship for a bit?

Yeah, so he bought cypriot citizenship in 2017 i think cyprus has like a investment for citizenship thing for a lot of like wealthy people from all over the world especially russian oligarchs many of whom are listening to this podcast right now and it's a level in simcopter russia if you're listening uh like one one way one tried and true way path to eu citizenship for them is to take a stake in the bank of cyprus and so like a couple russian oligarchs did that it's much easier than getting an irish lady pregnant um well my coda on all this is that I found a new Russian saying while I was trying to do research in Russian.

It was about, like, the article was about, like, how Derry Poska got his founding stake in Russian aluminum. And it was like he had to have some money to start with. But the saying is, Чтобы делать рагу из кролика, нужно хотя бы кошка. But the saying is, In order to make rabbit stew, you must at least have a cat. Is that the dessert? It's like, you know, you have to have some kind of meat.

Oh, that's interesting. So it's like you're going to pretend it it's rabbit stew but it's really cat meat one time when i was living in ukraine i there was like a belarusian grocery store not far from where i lived and i like it was late at night and i was really hungry so i just like stopped by there i was like do you have a can of tuna and they were like no but we have canned horse meat. We can change the label for you if you like. I'm like, wow, those are interchangeable. Speaking of horses, Oleg owns seven horses and six dogs. He loves animals. In Sochi, when there was a whole bunch of stray dogs,

he set up a shelter for all of those dogs, basically. And then they hold steroidal chemicals from them. Yeah, he set up a shelter for the strongest dogs in all of Sochi. I mean, the bitch wars are over. Yeah. The bitch is won.

Thus begins a new era. Thus begins a new era. Was that the subtitle of bridesmaids 3 um no that's the subtitle of my apartment um i have three roommates it's great no but um yeah i think that derry posca is sort of a an instructive look into both just like how murky things were in Russia in the 1990s and then like to what extent organized crime, transnational business, corruption and the state are all sort of like intertwined. Of course. And we're rapidly careening onto that path in the United States. And it all just goes into like global capitalism considering, as we've mentioned, how much of this was done through London, especially in the United States. And it all just goes into global capitalism,

considering, as we've mentioned, how much of this was done through London, especially during the 90s. So it's like it all gets laundered into it. And it's like, you know, capitalism is the most ethical system is what I'm trying to say. Money, money, money, money. Oleg Deripaska, good billionaire.

But I do want to thank... But really, the best thing about the 90s um i'm kind of mad you didn't use the sopranos theme more i talked about organized crime so much he used it at least twice i mean like he was he spent half this episode looking up which movie Daniel Day-Lewis was in. In the Navalny Club. All my research is redundant anyway. But I do want to thank Talia Levin. Talia Levin. Thank you so much.

And anything you want to plug, her Twitter is great. Check it out if you don't. Chicken Kiev with two underscores. It's a pun on the dish. Ah. Chicken Kiev. Her Twitter is great.

She's a columnist at The Village Voice. Anything else you want to plug? Socialism. Yes. Go socialism. I-W-W-D-S-A. It's out of order. Yeah.

And, you know, there's a lot of... I really appreciate your contribution to our research here. And there's a lot of other Russian oligarchs we will be talking about at some point. So we'd love to have you back sometime. Yeah. I'll be here to condescendingly correct your Russian pronunciation. Look, anyone condescending to Sean is a friend of the show. That's right.

That's right. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm so glad I was able as a woman to show up, serve you all coffee, make the best. Thank you for showing up so that we could talk over you this episode. No, please. I talked over you. And explain everything you already know back to you. She says something and then Yogi says it.

I'm like, wow, that's fascinating. No, this was great. Thanks so much, guys. I will plug it and with that my name is Yogi Paiwong I'm Sean P. McCarthy I'm Andy Palmer Steve Jeffers Talia Lavin and thank you

for listening and please enjoy at least 25 minutes of my pronunciation being corrected we hope you have enjoyed also shout out to the sit down with Mike Matt Anderson yeah check out Mike Christine's podcast it's great he gave us a nice we hope you have enjoyed also shout out to the sit down with Mike Racine oh yeah thanks Matt Anderson yeah check out Mike Racine's podcast

it's great he gave us a nice shout out we'll have him on sometime very funny comedian and thank you for listening if you like organized crime we'll see you next week bye him if i had him i wouldn't let him out golden eye not lace or leather golden chain take him to the

spot golden eye i'll show him forever it'll take forever to see what I've got. You'll never know how I watched you from the shadows as a child. You'll never know how it feels to get so close and be denied. It's a gold and honey trap I've got for you tonight. Revenge, it's a kiss this time I won't miss. Now I've got you in my sight. With a golden eye Golden, golden eye With a golden eye Golden eye Golden eye Golden eyes, golden eyes, golden eyes, golden eyes Thank you.