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September 21, 2009
WATCH MICKY DRIBBLE THE BALL – PROKHOROV’S AMERICAN MOVE IS A BUZZER BEATER BEFORE KREMLIN DISQUALIFIER
Dances with Bears
by John Helmer
Thanks to DDDB for alerting us to this story by "the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia."
Does Russia's Deputy Prime Minister hold the keys to Bruce Ratner's ultimate bailout?
In the original game of basketball, invented by Dr James Naismith in 1892, there were 13 rules. Rule 5 was the disqualifier. In the playbook of Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, there is just one rule – and that’s the disqualifier. Mikhail Prokhorov’s decision to buy into the American National Basketball Association is his signal he’s out of the Russian game.
Prokhorov has been acutely sensitive to the coverage he has been getting in the American media for some time, and according to a source in his circle, that is because he does not want to be seen by the Kremlin as getting too close to the US Government. Taking ski vacations in Aspen, Colorado, is one thing; shaking hands with the President of the United States is another (in a crowded room).
But investing up to a billion dollars or more in the US – well, Prokhorov’s men accept that, before doing that, it is prudent for the oligarch to clear the transaction in advance with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Igor Sechin, the deputy prime minister who hands out (and takes away) Russia’s mining and metals concessions. Outside Russia, this process is misunderstood. Inside Russia, it is quite straightforward – oligarchs holding concessions for the exploitation of Russian resources do so at the pleasure of the state. The dividends they draw out of these concessions may be squirreled away in offshore havens, even spent on sex objects. But the spending of the capital of the concession, cannot be decided according to the same whims, especially not at a time like this.
NoLandGrab: Damned if we can figure all this out, since as DDDB writes, "none of you, nor Bruce Ratner nor we ever thought one would have to become a Kremlinologist to read the tea leaves for Bruce and Brett's Excellent Adventure."
All we can say is, this whole Atlantic Yards saga just gets weirder and weirder.
Posted by eric at September 21, 2009 11:03 PM