Mr. DeLay Goes to Moscow
Excerpts from the secret "DeLay Diaries"
Recently the Washington Post revealed that Republican Congressman Tom DeLay, the powerful Majority Leader from Texas, paid a visit to our beloved Moscow in 1997. Well, he didn't exactly "pay" a visit -- instead, it was paid for by a shady Russian firm called NaftaSib, who sponsored DeLay's 5-star trek by washing the cash through an American lobbying firm.
NaftaSib wanted what all companies want: to buy a politician's votes. And boy did their cash deliver! As the Post noted, following the trip DeLay broke with his fellow right-wing Republicans and voted with Democrats for legislation that NaftaSib considered in its interests. The trip is causing DeLay problems not just because the way it was funded violates House rules, but also because of who his Russian benefactors are.
NaftaSib, whose offices are located on Khrusheskii Pereulok near the Kropotkinskaya metro station, made news in the English press only once before. Last year, in a highly-touted effort to rescue Yukos, Menatep honcho Konstantin Kagalovsky made a public appeal to arrange $8 billion in financing to cover the oil company's back-tax debts in return for a controlling stake. This was known as a "friendly" if futile offer, from Menatep's point of view at least, and was designed more as a PR stunt to shame the Kremlin than anything. Yet practically the same day, NaftaSib also went public offering the exact same deal to the Kremlin -- $8 billion in return for a controlling stake in Yukos -- that sent shivers down the spines of Yukos management and its Menatep shareholders.
NaftaSib's line of business is as shady as it is menacing. It is involved in oil, refining, contracts, bizarre veksel buyback deals with regional governments, security (as in protection-security, not stock-security) and it once co-owned an oil production unit with Orenburgneftegaz. More importantly, NaftaSib is deeply tied into the MChS, the Emergency Situations Ministry, which is headed by Sergei Shoigu, a key architect of the pro-Putin Edinstvo Party and its Duma victory in 1999. The MChS was also the ministry in charge of "clean up" at the scene of the controversial apartment bombings in 1999 that helped propel Putin to power.
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