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January 12, 2010
Back to Background Reviews in a Sort of “I told You So” Way: Developments With Respect to Prokhorov
Noticing New York
With reports out of Moscow alleging a possible attempted hit on a muckraking Australian journalist by employees of a private-security firm connected to a company which is 18.5% owned by pending Nets owner and Russian billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, Michael D.D. White revisits his recommendation that governmental entities in New York might want to be a wee bit more discerning in their public-private partnerships.
We previously wrote on the subject of public agency background checks with respect to approving project principals and whether the public agencies bringing us the Atlantic Yards mega-boondoggle (the Empire State Development Corporation and the Metropolitan Transportation Agency with the assistance of the City of New York) would try to sidestep a background review and approval for:
Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov as a new proposed owner of the Nets basketball team, the heavily subsidized arena the team is supposed to play in, as well as the rest of the Atlantic Yards project which right now is nothing more than a multi-decade option to monopolize the development potential of 22 acres of valuable Brooklyn real estate. . .
We pretty much predicted that the agencies would engage in such sidestepping, given the hellbent determination of those agencies to continue with Atlantic Yards no matter how many project negatives emerge and accumulate. Sidestep they did!
...Why might our ask-no-questions Atlantic Yards-loving public agencies now be regretting their decision not to do a Prokhorov background check? The latest news surfacing that an investigator doing a background review on Mr. Prokhorov would want to look into is this as phrased by Atlantic Yards Report:
a chilling charge surfacing in Moscow raises questions about Prokhorov's business interests and an alleged effort to silence a journalist.
Posted by eric at January 12, 2010 2:19 PM