int'l Eurasian Inst vavilov

<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see akh</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">punked?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://piie.com/experts/senior-research-staff/c-fred-bergsten">https://piie.com/experts/senior-research-staff/c-fred-bergsten</a></font></div><div>
</div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The article also&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/nyregion/russia-time-warner-center-andrey-vavilov.html" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">mentions</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;that in the early 1990s Mr. Vavilov had been doing a fellowship at the<b>&nbsp;Institute for International Economics (IIE), which is now called the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).</b></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1730 Rhode Island Ave NW</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Washington, DC 20036</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Downtown</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Phone number (202) 822-9292</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">radio free eur</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">https://www.rferl.org/a/rivals_in_kazakh_power_struggle_take_feud_washington/24244658.html</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 32px; padding: 0px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ASHINGTON -- Victims of persecution from around the world often come to Washington seeking justice. So there was nothing unusual in itself about Petr Afanasenko's trip to the U.S. capital in early June. He arrived bearing a grim tale of torture in the prisons of the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan, where he once worked as a bodyguard for a leader of the would-be opposition.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 32px; padding: 0px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On visits to Congress and the State Department, he described abuse at the hands of a particular government official. His alleged abuser was Rakhat Aliev, the then-son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />"I accuse Rakhat Aliev of personally fabricating a criminal case against me and my colleague when he was chairman of the Almaty province of the Committee of National Security," Afanasenko charged. "He personally participated in torture and tortured people."<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />Human rights activists say that Afanasenko's account of his imprisonment fits a broader pattern of abuse of opposition figures by the Kazakh government. What makes his visit noteworthy, though, is its timing. Afanasenko was arrested by the Kazakh authorities in 2000. He was released in 2001 and left the country several years after that, ultimately settling in Belgium. His imprisonment was criticized at the time by human rights organizations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the State Department's annual human rights report, which last mentioned his case in 2003.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />By contrast, his recent trip to the United States, 10 years after his release from prison, was sponsored by a murky Washington-based organization run by a lobbyist who hails from the former USSR.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />The episode raises suspicions that Afanasenko, likely a genuine victim of past government injustice, has become a pawn in a country-sized feud between Kazakhstan's most powerful man and one of his most dogged rivals. In recent years, the two sides have shifted their conflict to an unlikely new theater: Washington.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></p><div class="contentImage floatLeft" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="watermark" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">pix</font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rakhat Aliev (left) and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev in a 2001 photo</font></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In one corner is the government of 70-year-old President Nazarbaev, which, according to a recent investigation by "</span><strong style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;"><a class="wswa" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/world/asia/30kazakhstan.html?scp=2&sq=nazarbayev&st=cse" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">The New York Times</a></strong><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">," has spent millions of dollars over the past three years retaining lobbyists and wooing experts to argue its case in the corridors of power in the U.S. capital.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the other corner is Aliev, 48, who during his heyday in Kazakhstan -- first as a senior official in the secret police, then as a high-ranking diplomat -- amassed power and wealth second only to that of Nazarbaev himself. Aliev's downfall was correspondingly dramatic. First came divorce from the president's daughter, Dariga, followed by semi-exile as ambassador to Austria. It was in that country that Aliev, now on the run from his homeland, sought political asylum. In 2008, a Kazakh court convicted Aliev in absentia of attempting to topple the president.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><strong style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;">'Hiring' Congress</strong><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Public records show that Aliev, too, has tried to gain official favor in Washington by hiring lobbyists to promote his interests. According to a recent document released through the U.S. Lobbying Disclosure Act, one of the firms with which Aliev has worked is RJI Government Strategies Inc., a small Washington lobbying group whose consultants included Tanya Rahall, sister of Representative Nick J. Rahall II (Democrat, West Virginia).</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tanya Rahall declined to respond to RFE/RL's repeated requests for an interview.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a phone call to RFE/RL's Washington Bureau from an undisclosed location, Aliev said that his lobbying efforts had brought him little benefit.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"I hired Congress with the aim of telling the truth about myself and what's happening in Central Asia," Aliev said, adding: "I hired one of the smaller lobbying firms. Unfortunately, they were not able to achieve much in the way of results. During my conflict with Nazarbaev, all sorts of white, gray and black lobbyists of different kinds have turned up lately. They even work for two sides at the same time -- some of them even for three."</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The lobbyists hired by Aliev, according to public records, have declined to comment on the case.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Last week, in the latest dramatic twist in the two men's bitter feud, Nazarbaev's government announced that it was applying for Aliev's extradition from Austria on murder charges. The Kazakh government accuses Aliev of masterminding the kidnapping and murder in 2007 of two bank managers whose bodies were recently discovered in a pit near Almaty, the country's financial capital. An Austrian court rejected the extradition request, though without specifying the reasons. (Alice Irvin, a spokeswoman at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, responded to a request for information from RFE/RL by saying that, "According to our information Mr. Aliev no longer resides in Austria.")</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Back in Washington, meanwhile, two of Aliev's allies are pressing ahead with a high-stakes lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court. The two men, Devinci and Issam Hourani, are suing several lobbyists who worked for the Kazakhstan government for $2 billion in damages. The plaintiffs allege that consultants working on Kazakhstan's behalf helped the government to confiscate their property four years ago in retaliation for supporting Aliev. Issam, a British citizen, is married to Aliev's sister.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><strong style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;">'Slush Fund' Alleged</strong><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The lawsuit has generated attention because evidence introduced by the Houranis includes a letter that purportedly shows Kazakhstan's ambassador to the U.S. describing payments from the Kazakh government to members of congress.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The letter, dated November 2010, describes the activities of a congressional group called Friends of Kazakhstan, which, it says, was "created" by the Kazakh Embassy. According to the text of the letter, "The embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan is financing them through contributions to their funds from a special hard-currency fund set up by you."</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Kazakhstan has denounced the letter as a forgery and cites expert testimony to bolster its case. But the government has not denied seeking out the services of lobbyists. "Kazakhstan has indeed hired consultants, including in the United States," Kazakhstan's ambassador to the U.S., Erlan Idrissov, wrote in&nbsp;</span><strong style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;"><a class="wswa" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/lweb08kazakh.html?ref=nursultannazarbayev" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">a letter</a></strong><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">published in "The New York Times" in response to the newspaper's article. "This is to explain its position, as is accepted practice, and to respond to critics of the President who continue to perpetuate the fiction that Kazakhstan is a dictatorship."</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On June 2, the Washington-based watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO)&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a class="wswa" href="http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/letters/government-corruption/gc-ii-20110602-1.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">called on</a></strong>&nbsp;the U.S. Justice Department to start an investigation, expressing concern that "the government of Kazakhstan may have set up a slush fund to influence members of Congress." Jake Weins, an investigator for the group, says that the alleged&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a class="wswa" href="http://www.pogoarchives.org/m/gc/k/attachment-1.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">Kazakhstan Embassy letter</a></strong>&nbsp;detailing payments to Congress, if real, provides grounds for concern.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"If the document is authentic, it essentially shows that the government is unlawfully funding members of Congress, which is a pretty serious deal, because money in politics really matters," Weins said. "What we were able to do is to see that they have, in fact, established caucuses through lawmakers, and the lobbying firm that they had hired was feeding, not a ton of money, but a fair amount of money, to the leadership of that caucus."</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the same time, there is little to prevent foreign governments or individuals from influencing policy in the U.S. capital by directing funds to think tanks and academic institutes. Such organizations can set the terms of public debate and define the popular image of particular countries.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><strong style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;">War Of Attrition</strong><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Earlier this year, when Nazarbaev was said to have won 95.5 percent of the vote in Kazakhstan's presidential election, those on hand to applaud the outcome included members of a task force organized by two Washington think tanks -- the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Institute for New Democracy -- which received $290,000 from the Kazakh government two years ago to write a series of reports assessing the country's progress toward democracy, according to Central Asian affairs website&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a class="wsw__a" href="http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav121009a.shtml" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">eurasianet.org</a></strong>.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Margarita Assenova, executive director of the Institute for New Democracies, was quoted in the wake of this year's election as saying that "the people credit the wise leadership of Nazarbaev for peace, stability, economic development, and ethnic harmony in Kazakhstan. They want this to continue."</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The OSCE, for its part, criticized the results, saying that "reforms necessary for holding genuine democratic elections have yet to materialize."</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As for Afanasenko, he has vowed to pursue his allegations against Aliev in an Austrian court. Aliev calls his accusations "a crude lie," and dismisses them as part of the Kazakhstan government's campaign to malign him. He says that he has evidence that Afanasenko is employed by the Kazakh security service.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Meanwhile, the group that helped set Afanasenko's U.S. agenda, a one-man think tank called the <b>International Eurasian Institute for Economic and Political Research, seems determined to maintain a lower profile than its more illustrious counterparts. The organization is run by Rinat Akhmetshin,</b> an ex-Soviet citizen who has been linked in the past with Kazhegeldin, the Kazakh opposition leader who once employed Afanasenko as a bodyguard. Akhmetshin, who sponsored Afanasenko's visit, declined to comment on the case when contacted by e-mail, saying only that Afanasenko "is an old friend -- he is a Belgian citizen and has nothing to do with [Kazakhstan]."</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />Akhmetshin could not be contacted at the phone number shown on his institute's letterhead. There is no office at the Washington address it lists, and its website is moribund. "Institute relocated 5-6 years ago to a different address," said Akhmetshin in his e-mail message.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />The feud between Kazakhstan's president and his errant son-in-law, by contrast, shows no sign of subsiding anytime soon.</span></font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.thinktankwatch.com/2015/02/how-powerful-russian-oligarchs-use.html">http://www.thinktankwatch.com/<b>2015/02</b>/how-powerful-russian-oligarchs-use.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/nyregion/russia-time-warner-center-andrey-vavilov.html?r=0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Following</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;are some excerpts from a recent New York Times article entitled "</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Powerful Russians Commanding Park Views</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">," which is part of a series of articles called "</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Towers of Secrecy</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">."</span><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">First is a mention of the Brookings Institution:</span><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></font><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In March 2009, a bookish-looking Russian senator stepped to the podium at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The occasion was the inauguration of a new think tank devoted to United States-Russia cooperation on financial and energy security, and the speaker, Andrey Vavilov, had donated money.</font></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov was&nbsp;<a href="http://www.brookings.edu/_{/media/events/2009/3/23%20russia/20090323_russia.pdf}" title="Brookings transcript (pdf)" style="text-decoration-line: none;">introduced as a brave individual</a>&nbsp;who had toiled for years under adverse circumstances in Russia, a onetime deputy finance minister and former proprietor of an oil company. His talk, delivered in Russian, focused on the intricacies of the energy markets.</font></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="133" data-total-count="700" itemprop="articleBody"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Behind the trappings of Brookings and his professorial demeanor, though, were some more ambiguous elements of Mr. Vavilov’s career.</font></div></blockquote><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="http://www.brookings.edu/events/2009/03/23-russia" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Here</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;is a summary of that event.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">There is also a mention of&nbsp;<b>Mr. Vavilov's involvement in another US-based think tank which was used as an attack platform against an alleged enemy:</b></span><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></font><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, tensions had escalated to such a degree that<b>&nbsp;Mr. Vavilov wanted the operative, Rinat Akhmetshin</b>, director of a Washington think tank called the International Eurasian Institute, to help derail Mr. [Ashot] Egiazaryan’s application for asylum in the United States.</font></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I remember there was money in like $100 bills bags,” Mr. Akhmetshin would later testify, recounting how Mr. Vavilov pulled out $70,000 or $80,000 and handed it over — the first payment in a media campaign to discredit Mr. Egiazaryan.</font></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For help, Mr. Akhmetshin turned to Peter Zalmayev, who runs the Eurasia Democracy Initiative, which describes itself as devoted to promoting democracy and the rule of law in former Soviet states.</font></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="368" data-total-count="24674" itemprop="articleBody"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mr. Zalmayev later acknowledged in a deposition that he had been paid $100,000 but had not disclosed that he was working at the behest of Mr. Vavilov when he approached groups including the American Jewish Committee and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Both ultimately signed anti-Egiazaryan letters to the State Department and the Homeland Security secretary.</font></div></blockquote><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mr. Egiazaryan is a financier and former Russian lawmaker.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The article also&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/nyregion/russia-time-warner-center-andrey-vavilov.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">mentions</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;that in the early 1990s Mr. Vavilov had been doing a fellowship at the<b>&nbsp;Institute for International Economics (IIE), which is now called the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).</b></span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Meanwhile, the group that helped set Afanasenko's U.S. agenda, a one-man think tank called the&nbsp;<b>International Eurasian Institute for Economic and Political Research, seems determined to maintain a lower profile than its more illustrious counterparts. The organization is run by Rinat Akhmetshin,</b>&nbsp;an ex-Soviet citizen who has been linked in the past with Kazhegeldin, the Kazakh opposition leader who once employed Afanasenko as a bodyguard. Akhmetshin, who sponsored Afanasenko's visit, declined to comment on the case when contacted by e-mail, saying only that Afanasenko "is an old friend -- he is a Belgian citizen and has nothing to do with [Kazakhstan]."</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />Akhmetshin could not be contacted at the phone number shown on his institute's letterhead. There is no office at the Washington address it lists, and its website is moribund. "Institute relocated 5-6 years ago to a different address," said Akhmetshin in his e-mail message.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />The feud between Kazakhstan's president and his errant son-in-law, by contrast, shows no sign of subsiding anytime soon.</span></font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.thinktankwatch.com/2015/02/how-powerful-russian-oligarchs-use.html">http://www.thinktankwatch.com/<b>2015/02</b>/how-powerful-russian-oligarchs-use.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/nyregion/russia-time-warner-center-andrey-vavilov.html?r=0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Following</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;are some excerpts from a recent&nbsp;<b>New York Times article entitled "</b></span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Powerful Russians Commanding Park Views</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">," which is part of a series of articles called "</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Towers of Secrecy</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">."</span></b><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">First is a mention of the&nbsp;<b>Brookings Institution:</b>
</span></font><blockquote class="tr_bq"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In March 2009, a bookish-looking Russian senator stepped to the podium at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The occasion was the inauguration of a new think tank devoted to United States-Russia cooperation on financial and energy security, and the speaker, Andrey Vavilov, had donated money.</font></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov was&nbsp;<a href="http://www.brookings.edu/_{/media/events/2009/3/23%20russia/20090323_russia.pdf}" title="Brookings transcript (pdf)" style="text-decoration-line: none;">introduced as a brave individual</a>&nbsp;who had toiled for years under adverse circumstances in Russia, a onetime deputy finance minister and former proprietor of an oil company. His talk, delivered in Russian, focused on the intricacies of the energy markets.</font></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="133" data-total-count="700" itemprop="articleBody"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Behind the trappings of Brookings and his professorial demeanor, though, were some more ambiguous elements of Mr. Vavilov’s career.</font></div></blockquote><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="http://www.brookings.edu/events/2009/03/23-russia" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Here</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;is a summary of that event.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">There is also a mention of&nbsp;<b>Mr. Vavilov's involvement in another US-based think tank which was used as an attack platform against an alleged enemy:</b></span><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></font><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, tensions had escalated to such a degree that<b>&nbsp;Mr. Vavilov wanted the operative, Rinat Akhmetshin</b>, director of a Washington think tank called the International Eurasian Institute, to help derail Mr. [Ashot] Egiazaryan’s application for asylum in the United States.</font></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I remember there was money in like $100 bills bags,” Mr. Akhmetshin would later testify, recounting how Mr. Vavilov pulled out $70,000 or $80,000 and handed it over — the first payment in a media campaign to discredit Mr. Egiazaryan.</font></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For help, Mr. Akhmetshin turned to Peter Zalmayev, who runs the Eurasia Democracy Initiative, which describes itself as devoted to promoting democracy and the rule of law in former Soviet states.</font></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="368" data-total-count="24674" itemprop="articleBody"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mr. Zalmayev later acknowledged in a deposition that he had been paid $100,000 but had not disclosed that he was working at the behest of Mr. Vavilov when he approached groups including the American Jewish Committee and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Both ultimately signed anti-Egiazaryan letters to the State Department and the Homeland Security secretary.</font></div></blockquote><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mr. Egiazaryan is a financier and former Russian lawmaker.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The article also&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/nyregion/russia-time-warner-center-andrey-vavilov.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">mentions</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;that in the early 1990s Mr. Vavilov had been doing a fellowship at the<b>&nbsp;Institute for International Economics (IIE), which is now called the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).</b></span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/nyregion/russia-time-warner-center-andrey-vavilov.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In&nbsp;<span times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" color="color">&nbsp;</span><span times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" color="color">March 2009, a bookish-looking Russian senator stepped to the podium at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The occasion was the inauguration of a new think tank devoted to United States-Russia cooperation on financial and energy security, and the speaker, <b>Andrey Vavilov, had donated money.</b></span></font></div><div class="story-body-supplemental" style="display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; justify-content: space-between;"><div class="story-body story-body-1" style="position: relative; flex-grow: 0; width: 705px;"><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="269" data-total-count="567" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov was&nbsp;<a title="Brookings transcript (pdf)" href="http://www.brookings.edu/_{/media/events/2009/3/23%20russia/20090323_russia.pdf"}>introduced as a brave individual</a>&nbsp;who had toiled for years under adverse circumstances in Russia, a onetime deputy finance minister and former proprietor of an oil company. His talk, delivered in Russian, focused on the intricacies of the energy markets.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="133" data-total-count="700" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Behind the trappings of Brookings and his professorial demeanor, though, were some more ambiguous elements of Mr. Vavilov’s career.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="491" data-total-count="1191" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the Finance Ministry during the presidency of Boris N. Yeltsin, he helped develop a market-based economy that would ultimately mint vast riches for insiders.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He also wielded enormous power over state revenue and expenditures, including decisions over which banks would garner coveted government deposits. A parliamentary anticorruption committee later investigated allegations against him of favoritism and abuse of power — charges that he denied but that would shadow him for a decade.</span></font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="354" data-total-count="1545" id="story-continues-2" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He had become<b>&nbsp;extraordinarily wealthy during the early years of Vladimir V. Putin’s presidency, when the oil company he had acquired for $25 million was taken over in 2003 by a state-controlled enterprise for $600 million</b>. It was widely alleged that the purchase price was excessive, and that money was funneled to politicians in the form of kickbacks.</font></p><figure id="media-100000003475245" class="media photo embedded layout-small-vertical media-100000003475245" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/13/multimedia/tw-vavilov-illustration/tw-vavilov-illustration-master180.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" aria-label="media" role="group" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: flex; margin: 0px auto 25px; position: relative; flex-direction: column; clear: left; max-width: none; align-items: flex-start; width: 180px; float: none;"><span class="visually-hidden" style="position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo</font></span><div class="image" style="position: relative; margin-bottom: 7px; cursor: pointer; flex-shrink: 0; width: 180px;"><img src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/13/multimedia/tw-vavilov-illustration/tw-vavilov-illustration-master180.jpg" alt="" class="media-viewer-candidate" data-mediaviewer-src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/13/multimedia/tw-vavilov-illustration/tw-vavilov-illustration-superJumbo.jpg" data-mediaviewer-caption="Andrey Vavilov&nbsp;" data-mediaviewer-credit="Illustration by Michael Hoeweler" itemprop="url" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/13/multimedia/tw-vavilov-illustration/tw-vavilov-illustration-master180.jpg" style="height: auto; max-width: 100%; display: block; width: 180px;" /><div class="media-action-overlay" style="transition: opacity 0.2s ease-in 0s; border-radius: 6px; opacity: 0; bottom: 15px; left: 15px; position: absolute; z-index: 5; border: 1px solid rgba(200, 200, 200, 0.8); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="icon sprite-icon" assets="assets" article="article" images="images" sprite="sprite" sprite-no-repeat.svg="sprite-no-repeat.svg" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" background-position="background-position" px="px" width="width" height="height" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 0; vertical-align: middle; background-image: url(" /></font></div></div><figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" max-width="max-width" margin-left="margin-left" px="px" margin-right="margin-right" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" style="line-height: 1.0625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caption-text">Andrey Vavilov&nbsp;</span><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder" style="line-height: 1rem; display: inline-block;"><span class="visually-hidden" style="position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden;">Credit</span>Illustration by Michael Hoeweler</span></font></figcaption></figure><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="276" data-total-count="1821" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Six years later, as Mr. Vavilov helped inaugurate one new venture in Washington, his personal fortune was bringing another piece of business to fruition in New York. A</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">shell company tied to Mr. Vavilov was poised to buy a penthouse at the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of-foreign-wealth-flows-to-time-warner-condos.html">Time Warner Center</a>&nbsp;for $37.5 million.</span></font></p><a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/nyregion/russia-time-warner-center-andrey-vavilov.html#story-continues-3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden; text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Continue reading the main story</font></a></div><div class="supplemental first" id="supplemental-1" data-between-flex-ads="true" data-pre-height="992" data-max-items="1" data-remaining="47" data-minimum="400" data-last-item-height="945" data-flex-ad-adjacency="true" data-post-height="992" style="display: flex; width: 360px; flex-flow: column nowrap; justify-content: flex-start;"><div class="supplemental-items" data-supplemental-order="0" data-no-med-rec="true" data-no-ads="true" style="margin-bottom: 45px; height: 700px; max-height: 900px; display: flex; flex-flow: column nowrap; justify-content: space-between;"><aside class="marginalia collection-marginalia collection collection-type-column collection-tone-feature collection-section-us collection-theme-latest-headlines nocontent robots-nocontent" role="complementary" style="width: 360px; margin-bottom: 0px; border-top: none; padding-top: 0px; flex-shrink: 0; margin-top: 75px;"><div class="nocontent robots-nocontent"><header style="display: flex; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 226); padding-bottom: 11px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><div class="collection-meta" style="display: flex; flex-basis: 100%;"><div class="collection-headings" style="margin-right: 15px;"><h2 class="collection-marginalia-heading" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" webkit-font-smoothing="webkit-font-smoothing" antialiased="antialiased" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" em="em" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.125rem;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/shell-company-towers-of-secrecy-real-estate" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Towers of Secrecy:<span style="font-weight: 400;">&nbsp;Piercing the Shell Companies</span></font></a></h2><h3 class="collection-marginalia-subheading" style="line-height: 0.9375rem; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 500; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">From&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="font-weight: 500;">Manhattan condominiums to California mansions to&nbsp;</span>gentrifying&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: 500;">neighborhoods in Brooklyn, shell companies are increasingly pervasive in the world of real estate. These articles explore the people behind the opaque deals.</span></span></font></h3></div></div><div class="follow-button-placeholder" data-collection-id="column.shell-company-towers-of-secrecy-real-estate" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></header><ul style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 11px; list-style: none; padding-left: 0px;"><li times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" px="px" style="line-height: 1.4375rem;"><article class="story theme-summary"><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><h2 class="headline" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" flex="flex" style="line-height: 1.0625rem; font-weight: 400;"><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/us-expands-program-to-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="headline-text" style="padding-right: 0px; line-height: 1.125rem; max-width: 300px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">U.S. to Expand Tracking of Home Purchases by Shell Companies</font></span></a></h2></article></li><li times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" px="px" style="line-height: 1.4375rem;"><article class="story theme-summary"><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><h2 class="headline" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" flex="flex" style="line-height: 1.0625rem; font-weight: 400;"><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/world/asia/malaysia-1mdb-najib-razak.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="headline-text" style="padding-right: 0px; line-height: 1.125rem; max-width: 300px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Justice Dept. Rejects Account of How Malaysia’s Leader Acquired Millions</font></span></a></h2></article></li><li times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" px="px" style="line-height: 1.4375rem;"><article class="story theme-summary"><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><h2 class="headline" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" flex="flex" style="line-height: 1.0625rem; font-weight: 400;"><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/business/1mdb-singapore-ubs-dbs-standard-chartered.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="headline-text" style="padding-right: 0px; line-height: 1.125rem; max-width: 300px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Singapore Cites Three Banks in Inquiry Into Malaysia’s 1MDB Fund</font></span></a></h2></article></li><li times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" px="px" style="line-height: 1.4375rem;"><article class="story theme-summary"><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><h2 class="headline" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" flex="flex" style="line-height: 1.0625rem; font-weight: 400;"><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/americas/us-plans-to-require-banks-to-identify-owners-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="headline-text" style="padding-right: 0px; line-height: 1.125rem; max-width: 300px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">U.S. Plans to Require Banks to Identify Owners of Shell Companies</font></span></a></h2></article></li><li times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" px="px" style="line-height: 1.4375rem;"><article class="story theme-summary"><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><h2 class="headline" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" flex="flex" style="line-height: 1.0625rem; font-weight: 400;"><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a class="story-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/us/bills-seek-transparency-of-shell-companies.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FTowers%20of%20Secrecy:%20Piercing%20the%20Shell%20Companies" style="display: block; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="headline-text" style="padding-right: 0px; line-height: 1.125rem; max-width: 300px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Bills Seek Transparency of Shell Companies</font></span></a></h2></article></li></ul><footer style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-top: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 226); padding-top: 8px;"><p class="user-action" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 0.8125rem;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/shell-company-towers-of-secrecy-real-estate" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">See More »</font></a></p></footer></div></aside></div></div></div><div class="story-interrupter" id="story-continues-3"><div class="story-body-supplemental" style="display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; justify-content: space-between;"><div class="story-body story-body-2" style="position: relative; flex-grow: 0; width: 705px;"><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="371" data-total-count="2192" id="story-continues-4" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov’s purchase — all 8,275 square feet of it, with his-and-her master bathrooms and 360-degree city views — is an opulent example of how the flight of wealth accrued in the chaotic capitalism of post-Soviet Russia has been a powerful force behind the luxury condominium boom reordering New York City’s skyline. (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/nyregion/v-time-warner-center-anklav-mogushestvennih-russkih.html?r=0">Read a summary of this article in Russian.</a>)</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="419" data-total-count="2611" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the decade and a half since Mr. Putin came to power, Russians have socked away hundreds of billions of dollars overseas. Even as the Kremlin was promoting what it called a “<a title="Moscow Times article" href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/putins-deoffshorization-brings-major-firms-back-to-taxman/491910.html">deoffshorization</a>” campaign to repatriate Russian capital, an estimated $150 billion left the country last year. Unless Mr. Putin can effectively lock the door, that flow may intensify if Russia’s economy and currency continue to founder.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="480" data-total-count="3091" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>For many wealthy Russians, a New York condo serves as a double parachute — a safe-deposit box of sorts, and a soft landing spot should the climate back home turn inhospitable or dangerous&nbsp;</b>— even if that apartment sits dark and vacant for most of the year. In the process, the Russians, while not quite as ubiquitous as they are in, say, some of the tonier districts of London, have become the face of a sharpening debate about the impact of New York’s pied-à-terre economy.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="582" data-total-count="3673" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an&nbsp;<a title="New York magazine interview" href="http://nymag.com/news/politics/bloomberg/in-conversation-2013-9/">interview with New York magazine</a>&nbsp;in September 2013, the departing mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, described the wealthy foreigners as “a godsend” whose spending bolsters the city’s economy and provides revenue to take care of poorer New Yorkers. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?” the mayor said, and certainly many of his fellow citizens would agree. But to many others, the Russians, with their reputation for ostentatious wealth, are emblematic of a dangerously expanding gap between the city’s haves and have-nots.&nbsp; [pix grapf?]The archetype of the condo boom is the&nbsp;<a title="Residences at Time Warner" href="http://www.related.com/luxury-condominiums/previously-offered/nyc/the-residences-at-time-warner-center">Time Warner Center</a>. Marketed during the real estate malaise that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the towers were heavily promoted to an international clientele. The Russians have come buying.</font></p></div></div><div class="story-body-supplemental" style="display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; justify-content: space-between;"><div class="story-body story-body-3" style="position: relative; flex-grow: 0; width: 705px;"><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="273" data-total-count="4194" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many of the apartments were purchased through shell companies, but a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/the-hidden-money-buying-up-new-york-real-estate.html">New York Times investigation</a>&nbsp;identified at least 20 that have been owned by Russians or citizens of other former Soviet republics who, in all, invested more than $200 million in Time Warner Center condos.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="174" data-total-count="4368" id="story-continues-7" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This building has so many Russians, it’s unbelievable,” said Stratos Costalas, a real estate broker with Oxford Property Group who has sold apartments in the building.</font></p><figure id="timewarner-related" class="interactive interactive-embedded limit-small layout-sub-medium" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px calc((100% - 600px) / 2) 15px 40px; position: relative; border-top: 0px; padding-top: 15px; border-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; width: 600px; overflow: hidden; max-width: 310px; min-width: 300px; clear: right; text-align: center; float: right; z-index: 1;"><figcaption class="interactive-caption" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" style="line-height: 1rem;"><div class="interactive-graphic" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><div class="g-related" style="border-top: 1px solid rgb(219, 219, 219); padding-top: 25px;"><div class="g-related-content"><div class="g-related-title" kern="kern" style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1; display: inline-block; border-bottom: 2px solid black; padding: 6px 0px; letter-spacing: 2px; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/news-event/shell-company-towers-of-secrecy-real-estate" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TOWERS OF SECRECY</font></a></div><div class="series-summary" style="line-height: 1.43; margin: 19px auto 20px; width: 310px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Articles in this series examine people behind shell companies buying high-end real estate.</font></div><div id="related-100000003419859" class="g-article" style="margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left; overflow: hidden;"><div class="g-kicker g-kicker-live " style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.43;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part 1</font></div><div class="g-title" kern="kern" style="line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of-foreign-wealth-flows-to-time-warner-condos.html?module=RelatedCoverage" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Time Warner Center: Symbol of the Boom</font></a></div></div><div id="related-100000003463564" class="g-article" style="margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left; overflow: hidden;"><div class="g-kicker g-kicker-live " style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.43;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part 2</font></div><div class="g-title" kern="kern" style="line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/nyregion/jho-low-young-malaysian-has-an-appetite-for-new-york.html?module=RelatedCoverage" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Mysterious Malaysian Financier</font></a></div></div><div class="g-article" style="margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left; overflow: hidden;"><div class="g-kicker g-kicker-live " style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.43;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part 3</font></div><div class="g-title" kern="kern" style="line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/nyregion/kabul-chawla-bptp-india-real-estate-manhattan.html?module=RelatedCoverage" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Besieged Indian Builder</font></a></div></div><div id="related-100000003445655" class="g-article" style="margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left; overflow: hidden;"><div class="g-kicker g-kicker-live " style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.43;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part 4</font></div><div class="g-title" kern="kern" style="line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/nyregion/jose-murat-casab-mexico-pri-luxury-condos-us.html?module=RelatedCoverage" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Mexican Power Brokers</font></a></div></div><div id="related-100000003428520" class="g-article" style="margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left; overflow: hidden;"><div class="g-kicker g-kicker-live " style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.43;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part 5</font></div><div class="g-title" kern="kern" style="line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/nyregion/russia-time-warner-center-andrey-vavilov.html?module=RelatedCoverage" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Russian Minister and Friends</font></a></div></div><div id="related-100000004020610" class="g-article" style="margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left; overflow: hidden;"><div class="g-kicker g-kicker-live " style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.43;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part 6</font></div><div class="g-title" kern="kern" style="line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/nyregion/real-estate-shell-companies-scheme-to-defraud-owners-out-of-their-homes.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Brooklyn Deed Thieves</font></a></div></div><div id="related-100000004059043" class="g-article" style="margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left; overflow: hidden;"><div class="g-kicker g-kicker-live " style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.43;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part 7</font></div><div class="g-title" kern="kern" style="line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/us/shell-company-bel-air-mansion.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">A Mansion, a Shell Company and Resentment in Bel Air</font></a></div></div><div class="g-article" style="margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 219, 219); padding-bottom: 20px;"><div class="g-kicker g-kicker-live " style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.43;"><div class="g-title" kern="kern" style="line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/news-event/shell-company-towers-of-secrecy-real-estate" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Full Coverage and Response »</font></a></div></div></div></div></div><div class="footer" /></div></figcaption></figure><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="151" data-total-count="4519" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is evidence of even more Russian owners, but their identities are so carefully concealed that The Times was unable to definitively identify them.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="266" data-total-count="4785" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, even the longtime renters of Apartment 63B in the south tower do not know the names of their landlords, though they believe they are Russian. Records show that the legal owner is a company called Daloa Group Holdings, but from there the trail goes cold.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="300" data-total-count="5085" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Many of the Russians whom The Times was able to identify at the Time Warner Center were players in the epic deals of the Yeltsin era that privatized vast, hulking state companies and created the country’s most powerful oligarchs. And quite a few of their stories circle through that of Mr. Vavilov.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="340" data-total-count="5425" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mr. Vavilov did not respond to requests for an interview for this article. Nor did he speak up publicly a few years ago when a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;mysterious media blitz of charges and countercharges broke out involving a longtime adversary, a financier and former Russian lawmaker named Ashot Egiazaryan, who was seeking political asylum in the United States.</span></font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="412" data-total-count="5837" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It turns out that Mr. Vavilov was at the center of the byzantine affair. Seed money for the media campaign came from bags of cash Mr. Vavilov had lying around his Moscow home, according to a deposition from a subsequent defamation lawsuit in New York. Mr. Vavilov was neither plaintiff nor defendant in the litigation, but by the time it was over in 2014, he had quietly spent more than $1 million in legal fees.</font></p><h4 class="story-subheading story-content" data-para-count="17" data-total-count="5854" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.8125rem; font-weight: 300;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pursuit of Luxury</font></h4><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[px]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="291" data-total-count="6145" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vavilov, 54, looks every bit the ivory tower economist, with closely cropped graying hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He has a Ph.D. from the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute in Moscow and is a visiting senior scholar in the economics department at Pennsylvania State University.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="182" data-total-count="6327" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet along with that academician’s image, cultivated on his&nbsp;<a title="Mr. Vavilov's website" href="http://www.avavilov.ru/en/">personal website</a>and in public appearances, comes a penchant for audacious gestures and an expansive appetite for luxury.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="587" data-total-count="6914" id="story-continues-8" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">He&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">once placed billboards around Moscow announcing his love for his wife, an actress and dancer named Mariana Tsaregradskaya. In addition to the New York penthouse and a home in Moscow, they have had residences in Monaco and Beverly Hills. He has<b>owned an Airbus jet,</b>&nbsp;according to court papers, and the couple have been known to fly to the Little Nell, a luxury hotel in Aspen, Colo., for ski holidays. In 2004, the Russian news agency RBC reported that Ms. Tsaregradskaya had&nbsp;<a title="RBC article" href="http://rusnewsjournal.com/3/165309/">purchased two diamonds</a>&nbsp;— of 55 and 59.5 carats — previously displayed in museums. The tab was $60 million.</span></font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="120" data-total-count="7034" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the path was circuitous, it was quite by design that the couple ended up with one of the showiest condos in New York.</font></p><figure id="timewarner-llcs" class="interactive interactive-embedded limit-xsmall layout-small" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px calc((100% - 600px) / 2) 15px 40px; position: relative; border-top: 0px; padding-top: 15px; border-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; width: auto; overflow: hidden; max-width: 310px; min-width: 180px; float: right; clear: right; text-align: center; z-index: 1;"><figcaption class="interactive-caption" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" style="line-height: 1rem;"><h2 class="interactive-headline" style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 500; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 6px 0px 10px; letter-spacing: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ABOUT L.L.C.s</font></h2></figcaption><div class="interactive-graphic" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><div class="g-llcs"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.4; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As The Times wrote in the first part of this series, while shell companies like limited liability companies and trusts can be used for secrecy, they are frequently used for other purposes, including avoiding exposure to lawsuits or double taxation. They are also used in multiparty real estate transactions. This was the case several years ago with family members of a reporter on this project, Louise Story. And they are used in inheritance matters and investment strategies.</font></p></div></div><div class="footer" /></figure><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="427" data-total-count="7461" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Originally, they had hoped to settle at the Plaza, the venerable hotel that was undergoing a&nbsp;<a title="Times article" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/fashion/17plaza.html">partial conversion&nbsp;</a><a title="Times article" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/fashion/17plaza.html">to condos</a>. Based on a model, they signed contracts in February 2007 for two penthouses — a triplex for $39.5 million through the shell company Penthouse 2009 Inc. and a duplex for $14 million under the name Penthouse 2011 Inc. The two condos shared a wall and could be connected through a bedroom and living room.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="191" data-total-count="7652" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov stated “in no uncertain terms that he wished to own the largest and most expensive apartment at the Plaza,” according to documents filed in a subsequent lawsuit over the sale.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="490" data-total-count="8142" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In January 2008, with construction underway, the couple visited the interior designer Howard Slatkin at his Upper East Side apartment filled with custom fabrics, art and antiques. He advised them that redecorating their condo in a similar motif would cost about $1,500 a square foot, according to court records. Admiring the décor — which a 2013 article in The Times described as “<a title="Times article" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/books/review/howard-slatkins-fifth-avenue-style-and-more.html">Italian palazzo meets Russian princess</a>” — they engaged Mr. Slatkin’s company for several projects.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="545" data-total-count="8687" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One was to&nbsp;<b>redecorate the Airbus jet.</b>&nbsp;Another was the redesign of what was to be the couple’s interim residence while the apartments at the Plaza were under construction — Apartment 70B in the Time Warner Center’s north tower. The couple had purchased the 3,000-square-foot condo in 2007 for $13 million through another shell corporation — TW70B Inc. The decoration of 70B was to be a test before Mr. Slatkin set out on the largest and final project — decorating the Plaza penthouses that were to be their permanent New York residence.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="465" data-total-count="9152" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In late June, the couple conducted a walk-through of the Plaza penthouses before closing. It was during this visit that Ms. Tsaregradskaya expressed her displeasure, complaining that the apartments were not large enough, among other things. Several weeks later, the couple refused to close, alleging that the apartments’ design and construction did not measure up to what had been advertised. The developer said it would keep their $10.7 million security deposit.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="314" data-total-count="9466" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;lawsuit filed in August 2008, the corporations Penthouse 2009 Inc. and Penthouse 2011 Inc. complained that the apartments at the Plaza resembled attics, with low ceilings, unsightly air conditioning units and inferior bathroom tile. Their lawyer, in a news release, accused the developer of a bait and switch.</span></font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="193" data-total-count="9659" id="story-continues-9" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“My client was led to believe that it would receive one of the most luxurious apartments in New York history; it got far less than what it bargained for,” the lawyer, Y. David Scharf, said.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="179" data-total-count="9838" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The suit was ultimately settled. Mr. Vavilov and Ms. Tsaregradskaya later had a falling out with Mr. Slatkin as well, and an arbitrator directed him to repay more than $3 million.</font></p><figure id="media-100000003453219" class="media photo embedded layout-large-horizontal media-100000003453219 ratio-tall" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/16/us/xxRUSSIA2/xxRUSSIA2-master675.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" aria-label="media" role="group" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: flex; margin: 45px 0px; position: relative; flex-direction: column; clear: both; max-width: none; width: 645px;"><span class="visually-hidden" style="position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo</font></span><div class="image" style="position: relative; margin-bottom: 7px; cursor: pointer; flex-shrink: 0;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" max-width="max-width" margin-left="margin-left" px="px" margin-right="margin-right" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" style="line-height: 1.0625rem;"><span class="caption-text"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Time Warner penthouse, shown in a real estate listing, that was purchased by a company tied to Mr. Vavilov. Russians and citizens of other former Soviet republics have paid a total of more than $200 million for Time Warner condos.</font></span></figcaption></figure><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="165" data-total-count="10003" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In May 2009, deeming the Plaza not up to their standards, the couple entered into a $37.5 million contract for PH78 at the Time Warner Center, property records show.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="53" data-total-count="10056" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The buyer was registered under the name Southerndown.</font></p><h4 class="story-subheading story-content" data-para-count="28" data-total-count="10084" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.8125rem; font-weight: 300;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Questions and Investigations</font></h4><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="202" data-total-count="10286" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In February 1997,<a title="Moscow Times article" href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/1997/2/article/fsb-heads-investigation-of-ministerial-bombing/312318.html">&nbsp;a bomb exploded in an empty Saab 9000</a>&nbsp;parked in front of Russia’s Finance Ministry, not far from the Kremlin. The car belonged to Mr. Vavilov, at that time a deputy finance minister.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="200" data-total-count="10486" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No one was ever arrested, and the blast was never explained. But in the brutal political infighting of that time, Mr. Vavilov was a man with a certain number of enemies, a man surrounded by suspicion.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="462" data-total-count="10948" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov had joined the Finance Ministry in 1992, one of a handful of idealistic free-market economists embracing a capitalist model in the early days of the Russian Federation. He was only 31, but was already regarded as a leading expert in finance. The year before, he had cut short a fellowship at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington to return home and help shape the parameters of a market-based system for the young republic.</font></p><figure id="media-100000003453224" class="media photo embedded layout-large-horizontal media-100000003453224 ratio-tall" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/16/us/xxRUSSIA3/xxRUSSIA3-master675.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" aria-label="media" role="group" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: flex; margin: 45px 0px; position: relative; flex-direction: column; clear: both; max-width: none; width: 645px;"><span class="visually-hidden" style="position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo</font></span><div class="image" style="position: relative; margin-bottom: 7px; cursor: pointer; flex-shrink: 0;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" max-width="max-width" margin-left="margin-left" px="px" margin-right="margin-right" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" style="line-height: 1.0625rem;"><span class="caption-text"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrey Vavilov, left, and other Russian officials at the opening of an auto plant in 1993. Mr. Vavilov, who joined the Finance Ministry the year before, helped shape a new market-based system for the Russian Federation.</font></span></figcaption></figure><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="412" data-total-count="11360" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the center of those reforms was the auctioning of pieces of the old Soviet industrial complex. A principal component of that process — and one of the most vociferously assailed as a corrupt ceding of prized assets to a handful of insiders — was a program begun in 1995 called Loans for Shares, in which&nbsp;<a title="Times article" href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/28/world/russian-banking-scandal-poses-threat-to-future-of-privatization.html">favored banks received stakes in state enterprises in return for loans</a>to the cash-starved government.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="84" data-total-count="11444" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov’s primary portfolio as deputy finance minister, though, lay elsewhere.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="412" data-total-count="11856" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the person responsible for all government expenditures and revenues in foreign currencies, Mr. Vavilov shouldered enormous responsibility for the day-to-day execution of financial transactions. He also managed debt issues as Russia sought to renegotiate billions of dollars in loans to international creditors held over from the Soviet Union, as well as to collect on debts owed to it by former client states.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="326" data-total-count="12182" id="story-continues-10" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Where he wielded the greatest power, though, was in selecting banks that would win government deposits. With the oligarchic bank owners vying for these assets, Mr. Vavilov was in a position not only to distribute the cash and high-yield government notes, but also to shape the terms in an emerging market with few regulations.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="179" data-total-count="12361" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although he played little direct role in the privatization process, this access to money was essential for banks in the competition to acquire the gems of the former Soviet state.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="237" data-total-count="12598" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He decided how much deposits to place in which banks, coincident at the same time with privatization,” said one person knowledgeable about Mr. Vavilov’s time in office who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="317" data-total-count="12915" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
<b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Among the issues under scrutiny was a 1996 agreement that had permitted Ukraine to pay a natural gas debt to Russia with construction materials.&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Of $450 million in materials supposed to have been shipped to the Russian Defense Ministry to pay off the loan, only $123 million worth arrived, investigators said.I</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">n 2001, after the recently elevated Mr. Putin began recentralizing industry, vowing to eliminate “as a class” the Yeltsin-era oligarchs, the Russian Parliament began investigating a host of the former president’s ministers. The review included a detailed look at Mr. Vavilov’s tenure at the Finance Ministry.</span></font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="209" data-total-count="13433" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Russian general was tried and sent to prison. At trial, he argued that he was being made the fall guy for high-ranking ministers, and he pointed the finger at Mr. Vavilov as the signatory on the arrangement.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="68" data-total-count="13501" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov denied wrongdoing, and the case against him was dropped.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="278" data-total-count="13779" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another case, though, would shadow Mr. Vavilov for years, nourishing suspicions that he had promoted the interests of favored banks. It involved allegations that he had mishandled about $230 million distributed in 1997 for the manufacture of Russian MIG jets destined for&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/nyregion/kabul-chawla-bptp-india-real-estate-manhattan.html">India</a>.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="345" data-total-count="14124" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Soon after Mr. Vavilov left the Finance Ministry in spring 1997, the chairman of Russia’s Central Bank alleged that the money, instead of being transferred directly to the jet manufacturer’s account, had been diverted through accounts at several banks in the form of government bonds known for their particularly beneficial terms to bankers.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="347" data-total-count="14471" id="story-continues-11" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov denied wrongdoing, saying the money had been deposited in the manufacturer’s account and had been spent appropriately. The case against him was closed, but the allegations festered until 2007, when it was reopened and the Russian Supreme Court upheld charges of fraud and abuse of office, clearing the way for Mr. Vavilov’s arrest.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="198" data-total-count="14669" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By then, however, he had become a senator, complicating the case because the position confers parliamentary immunity. The statute of limitations eventually expired, and the case was dropped in 2008.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="189" data-total-count="14858" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You never know what’s going on, who is guilty or not, but they made a very good public case against him,” said Bernard Sucher, an American who worked for 20 years in Russian banking.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="310" data-total-count="15168" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov later said he was the victim of a smear campaign by his enemies. And in his 2010 book, “<a title="Publisher’s web page" href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-russian-public-debt-and-financial-meltdowns-andrey-vavilov/?K=9780230248939">The Russian Public Debt and Financial Meltdowns</a>,” he said he had argued strongly against the Loans for Shares auctions, which he called “a privatization for oligarchs of the Russian ‘crown jewels.’”</font></p><figure id="tw-reporters" class="interactive interactive-embedded limit-small layout-small" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px calc((100% - 600px) / 2) 15px 40px; position: relative; border-top: 0px; padding-top: 15px; border-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; width: calc(100% - 60px); overflow: hidden; max-width: 310px; min-width: 300px; float: right; clear: right; z-index: 1;"><figcaption class="interactive-caption" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" style="line-height: 1rem;"><h2 class="interactive-headline" style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 500; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 6px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.1em; text-align: center;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CONTACT THE REPORTERS</font></h2></figcaption><div class="interactive-graphic" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><div class="g-reporters"><div class="g-reporter" style="margin-bottom: 15px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Louise Story</span>
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/louise.story" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="g-facebook-icon" http="http" graphics8.nytimes.com="graphics8.nytimes.com" newsgraphics="newsgraphics" time-warner="time-warner" assets="assets" sprite-no-repeat.png="sprite-no-repeat.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" width="width" height="height" margin-right="margin-right" vertical-align="vertical-align" style="display: inline-block; background: url(">louise.story</span></a>&nbsp;
<a href="http://www.twitter.com/louisestory" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="g-twitter-icon" http="http" graphics8.nytimes.com="graphics8.nytimes.com" newsgraphics="newsgraphics" time-warner="time-warner" assets="assets" sprite-no-repeat.png="sprite-no-repeat.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" width="width" height="height" margin-right="margin-right" vertical-align="vertical-align" style="display: inline-block; background: url(">louisestory</span></a>
<a href="mailto:louise@nytimes.com" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="g-email-icon" http="http" graphics8.nytimes.com="graphics8.nytimes.com" newsgraphics="newsgraphics" time-warner="time-warner" assets="assets" sprite-no-repeat.png="sprite-no-repeat.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" width="width" height="height" opacity="opacity" margin-right="margin-right" style="display: inline-block; background: url(">Send an email</span></a></font></div><div class="g-reporter" style="margin-bottom: 15px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Stephanie Saul</span>
<a href="http://www.twitter.com/stefsaul" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="g-twitter-icon" http="http" graphics8.nytimes.com="graphics8.nytimes.com" newsgraphics="newsgraphics" time-warner="time-warner" assets="assets" sprite-no-repeat.png="sprite-no-repeat.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" width="width" height="height" margin-right="margin-right" vertical-align="vertical-align" style="display: inline-block; background: url(">stefsaul</span></a>
<a href="mailto:%20sauls@nytimes.com" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="g-email-icon" http="http" graphics8.nytimes.com="graphics8.nytimes.com" newsgraphics="newsgraphics" time-warner="time-warner" assets="assets" sprite-no-repeat.png="sprite-no-repeat.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" width="width" height="height" opacity="opacity" margin-right="margin-right" style="display: inline-block; background: url(">Send an email</span></a></font></div></div></div><div class="footer" /></figure><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="145" data-total-count="15313" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He invoked the story of Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury secretary in the early days of the American republic who died in a duel with Aaron Burr.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="400" data-total-count="15713" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Because of my tough position I became the subject of a hysterical and dirty campaign in the mass media that was controlled by the oligarchs,” Mr. Vavilov wrote. “Duels in modern times are not permitted, and there is no place for heroism in the spirit of Alexander Hamilton. The only possible response to the insinuations in the mass media was my decision to resign at the beginning of 1997.”</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="370" data-total-count="16083" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unexplained in his book was his decision, upon leaving government, to become president of an affiliate of Uneximbank, which had been founded by one of the authors — and chief beneficiaries — of Loans for Shares, Vladimir Potanin. In 1995, in one of the program’s most notorious auctions, Mr. Potanin’s bank won virtual control of the mining giant Norilsk Nickel.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="235" data-total-count="16318" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Despite Mr. Vavilov’s close association with the Yeltsin administration, much of his wealth was acquired later, as Mr. Putin’s government was consolidating the nation’s oil industry in<b>&nbsp;one state-affiliated super company, Rosneft...</b>.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="258" data-total-count="16576" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">n 2000, Mr. Vavilov had acquired a small oil company, Severnaya Neft, or Northern Oil, for $25 million. When&nbsp;<a title="Pravda article" href="http://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/economics/12-02-2003/21679-0/">Rosneft purchased Severnaya Neft</a>&nbsp;in 2003 for $600 million, the deal was widely criticized as having been larded with kickbacks for Kremlin insiders.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="348" data-total-count="16924" id="story-continues-12" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a now-legendary confrontation at the Kremlin, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, chairman of the oil giant Yukos, challenged Mr. Putin about the purchase. Many people believed that it was Mr. Putin’s anger over the very public encounter that sparked his campaign against Mr. Khodorkovsky, who would be stripped of his company,&nbsp;<a title="Times article" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/21/world/europe/mikhail-khodorkovsky-russia-pardon.html">prosecuted and imprisoned</a>.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="258" data-total-count="17182" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an interview with The Times in 2007, Mr. Vavilov said of Severnaya Neft, “It was a big achievement for me from all points of view. When I bought the company nobody even took it seriously. It became one of the fastest-growing companies in the country.”</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="118" data-total-count="17300" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even so, Mr. Vavilov’s critics look back over his career and see a classic transformation story of that Russian era.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="191" data-total-count="17491" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The issue with Vavilov is that he was one of the reformers who switched to the oligarchic side,” said Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute.</font></p><h4 class="story-subheading story-content" data-para-count="27" data-total-count="17518" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.8125rem; font-weight: 300; margin: 33px 0px 14px 75px; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Connections Among Neighbors</font></h4><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="284" data-total-count="17802" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the Time Warner Center, Mr. Vavilov and Ms. Tsaregradskaya needed little introduction, particularly in the ultraexpensive top floors, where a number of the Russian owners were linked through a tangled — one might even say Dostoevskian — web of relationships and business deals.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="569" data-total-count="18371" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before buying at the Time Warner Center, Mr. Vavilov had visited the unit of Oleg Baybakov, whose family members have owned three Time Warner Center apartments at various times. Mr. Baybakov made part of his fortune as an executive of Norilsk Nickel, the mining company acquired for a fraction of its value in the Loans for Shares program. In fact, he is one of several Time Warner owners with ties to the Norilsk deal, in which one of the winning partners was Mikhail Prokhorov, now a visible figure in New York as principal owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team.</font></p><figure id="media-100000003461878" class="media photo embedded layout-small-vertical media-100000003461878" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/21/us/xxRUSSIA4/xxRUSSIA4-master180.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" aria-label="media" role="group" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: flex; margin: 6px 30px 45px 0px; position: relative; flex-direction: column; clear: left; max-width: none; align-items: flex-start; width: 180px; float: left;"><span class="visually-hidden" style="position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo</font></span><div class="image" style="position: relative; margin-bottom: 7px; cursor: pointer; flex-shrink: 0; width: 180px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description" style="line-height: 1.0625rem; max-width: 100%; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px;"><span class="caption-text"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oleg Baybakov, left, and Maxim Finskiy in 2010.</font></span></figcaption></figure><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="436" data-total-count="18807" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Baybakov is primarily known in New York through his daughter, Maria Baibakova, a young socialite and art-scene fixture. Before helping foster his daughter’s art career, however, Mr. Baybakov had sought to establish her in the restaurant business. After plans for a downtown restaurant called Fum fell apart, Mr. Baybakov’s restaurant company sued his business partner to recoup his investment and collect $75,000 left in escrow.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="500" data-total-count="19307" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When advised by one of the lawyers that the legal fees might exceed the amount in escrow, Mr. Baybakov said he did not care. “I will spend 10 times more and sue you,” he told the lawyer, according to a deposition. In the end, Mr. Baybakov failed to show up for trial, and so did his ex-wife, also a partner in the business. “She also apparently evinced a disregard for the court’s process,” said Justice Louis B. York of State Supreme Court, dismissing the case, according to court records.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="359" data-total-count="19666" id="story-continues-13" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Baybakovs sold one of their Time Warner apartments, 74A in the north tower, to a shell company called Ff Property Management for $11 million in 2008. The Times traced the shell company to Maxim Finskiy, also a former Norilsk Nickel executive and a partner with Mr. Prokhorov in another mining company. The apartment was sold for $18 million last November.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="493" data-total-count="20159" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Mr. Prokhorov was a big winner in the Norilsk deal, the loser was Vitaly Malkin, whose Rossiyskiy Kredit Bank submitted a higher bid but was shut out on technical grounds. At the time, though, another deal was on the horizon that would benefit him — an agreement to finance Angola’s $5 billion debt that generated controversy because of payments to Angolan officials and to middlemen, including Mr. Malkin. At the Russian Foreign Ministry, it was Mr. Vavilov who signed off on the deal.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="169" data-total-count="20328" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Malkin’s lawyer called his client’s $48.8 million payment a dividend, explaining that he had held shares in a company that served as an intermediary in the deal.</font></p><figure id="media-100000003475250" class="media photo embedded layout-small-vertical media-100000003475250" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/13/multimedia/tw-malkin-illustration/tw-malkin-illustration-master180.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" aria-label="media" role="group" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: flex; margin: 6px 30px 45px 0px; position: relative; flex-direction: column; clear: left; max-width: none; align-items: flex-start; width: 180px; float: left;"><span class="visually-hidden" style="position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo</font></span><div class="image" style="position: relative; margin-bottom: 7px; cursor: pointer; flex-shrink: 0; width: 180px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description" style="line-height: 1.0625rem; max-width: 100%; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caption-text">Vitaly Malkin</span><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder" style="line-height: 1rem; display: inline-block;"><span class="visually-hidden" style="position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden;">Credit</span>Illustration by Michael Hoeweler</span></font></figcaption></figure><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="160" data-total-count="20488" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2010, a limited liability company traced to Mr. Malkin’s family paid $15.65 million for Apartment 74B, a duplex, in the Time Warner Center’s south tower.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="304" data-total-count="20792" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A member of an administrative council of Mr. Malkin’s bank, Vasily Anisimov, has a connection to the Time Warner Center as well. A penthouse there was purchased in 2004 for $9.8 million through a trust for the benefit of Mr. Anisimov’s daughter, Anna Anisimova, then a student at New York University.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="263" data-total-count="21055" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Anisimov made his fortune in aluminum in the 1990s. He remains influential in Russia, where he has been an associate of Arkady Rotenberg, a longtime friend of Mr. Putin who was among those sanctioned by the United States after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="408" data-total-count="21463" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Possibly Mr. Vavilov’s longest-standing associate in the Time Warner Center is Konstantin Kagalovsky. In 1991, the two were members of a group of five who holed up in a dacha outside Moscow to develop an economic platform for the emerging republic. Mr. Kagalovsky went on to become Russia’s representative to the International Monetary Fund and later&nbsp;<b>vice chairman of Mr. Khodorkovsky’s company, Yukos.</b></font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="472" data-total-count="21935" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 1999, Mr. Kagalovsky’s wife, Natasha Gurfinkel Kagalovsky, was enmeshed in an international money-laundering investigation focused on her employer, the Bank of New York.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;The bank ultimately&nbsp;</span><a title="Times article" href="http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/20/world/bank-in-laundering-inquiry-courted-russians-zealously.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">suspended Ms. Kagalovsky</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, who had authority over Russian accounts as head of the bank’s Eastern European division. She denied wrongdoing, and no charges were filed against her. She later sued the bank, saying that she had been wrongfully suspended, and received a settlement.</span></font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="138" data-total-count="22073" id="story-continues-14" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Through records and interviews, The Times established that the Kagalovskys, through a shell company, are owners at the Time Warner Center.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="157" data-total-count="22230" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Kagalovsky, who did not respond to questions for this article, has become another of the Time Warner Russians embroiled in recent litigation in New York.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="295" data-total-count="22525" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a lawsuit in State Supreme Court, he was found to have wrongfully wrested control of a Ukrainian television network from his partner, Vladimir Gusinski. The judge ruled in 2012 that Mr. Kagalovsky and his associates had secretly transferred ownership of the company to entities he controlled.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="231" data-total-count="22756" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his decision, the judge wrote that Mr. Kagalovsky and a company executive had agreed that if Mr. Gusinski refused to step down, Mr. Kagalovsky would take over the company using “the traditional Russian and Ukrainian method.”</font></p><h4 class="story-subheading story-content" data-para-count="23" data-total-count="22779" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.8125rem; font-weight: 300; margin: 33px 0px 14px 75px; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Behind a Media Campaign</font></h4><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="145" data-total-count="22924" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov was preparing to export his own Russian rivalry to America when he invited a Washington operative to his Moscow home in January 2011.</font></p><figure id="media-100000003461880" class="media photo embedded layout-small-horizontal media-100000003461880 ratio-tall" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/21/us/xxRUSSIA5sub/xxRUSSIA5sub-master315.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" aria-label="media" role="group" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: flex; margin: 6px 30px 45px 0px; position: relative; flex-direction: column; clear: left; max-width: none; align-items: flex-start; width: 300px; float: left;"><span class="visually-hidden" style="position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo</font></span><div class="image" style="position: relative; margin-bottom: 7px; cursor: pointer; flex-shrink: 0; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><figcaption class="caption" itemprop="caption description" style="line-height: 1.0625rem; max-width: 100%; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caption-text">Ashot Egiazaryan, a financier and former Russian lawmaker, was the subject of a negative campaign financed by Mr. Vavilov.</span><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder" style="line-height: 1rem; display: inline-block;"><span class="visually-hidden" style="position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden;">Credit</span>Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press</span></font></figcaption></figure><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="185" data-total-count="23109" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Vavilov had recently learned that Mr. Egiazaryan, the financier and former lawmaker, had taken up residence in Beverly Hills after fleeing Russia, where he was facing fraud charges.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="501" data-total-count="23610" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Mr. Vavilov hated Mr. Egiazaryan, according to a deposition from one figure in the later legal case, the precise genesis of that antagonism is not clear. It might have been related to Mr. Vavilov’s former oil company, Severnaya Neft, in which Mr. Egiazaryan’s cousin had once been an investor. Or it might have been related to the longstanding allegations about the murky MIG case, which included claims that money had disappeared in Unikombank, where Mr. Egiazaryan was a major shareholder.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="261" data-total-count="23871" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Now, tensions had escalated to such a degree that Mr. Vavilov wanted the operative,&nbsp;<b>Rinat Akhmetshin,</b>&nbsp;director of a Washington think tank called the International Eurasian Institute, to help derail Mr. Egiazaryan’s application for asylum in the United States.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="240" data-total-count="24111" id="story-continues-15" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I remember there was money in like $100 bills bags,” Mr. Akhmetshin would later testify, recounting how Mr. Vavilov pulled out $70,000 or $80,000 and handed it over — the first payment in a media campaign to discredit Mr. Egiazaryan.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="195" data-total-count="24306" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">For help, Mr. Akhmetshin turned to Peter Zalmayev, who runs the Eurasia Democracy Initiative, which describes itself as devoted to promoting democracy and the rule of law in former Soviet states.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="368" data-total-count="24674" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Zalmayev later acknowledged in a deposition that he had been paid $100,000 but had not disclosed that he was working at the behest of Mr. Vavilov when he approached groups including the American Jewish Committee and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Both ultimately signed anti-Egiazaryan letters to the State Department and the Homeland Security secretary.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="324" data-total-count="24998" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr.&nbsp;<b>Zalmayev</b>’s strategy largely relied on painting Mr. Egiazaryan as anti-Semitic because of his connection to the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, headed by an ultranationalist. By March 2011, Mr. Zalmayev had persuaded The Jewish Journal, a widely read newspaper in California, to publish an opinion article he wrote.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="253" data-total-count="25251" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Jewish groups in America and Russia have repeatedly condemned the L.D.P.R. and its leader as anti-Semitic,” the article said, adding, “The U.S. government must likewise put anti-Semites worldwide on notice: You are not welcome in this country.”</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="380" data-total-count="25631" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Zalmayev also acknowledged paying $7,000 to a Russian-language radio host in Boston, whose byline was used on&nbsp;<a title="Moscow Times article" href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/tmt/432450.html">an article</a>, partly drafted by Mr. Zalmayev, expressing opposition to Mr. Egiazaryan’s asylum application. And he donated $2,000 to Lev Ponomarev, a human rights activist in Russia, who had signed letters to members of Congress, also partly drafted by Mr. Zalmayev.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="237" data-total-count="25868" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Ponomarev later rescinded the letters as a “grave mistake” and returned the money, but not before a staff member of the United States Helsinki Commission, a federal agency, raised questions in an email exchange with Mr. Zalmayev.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="194" data-total-count="26062" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Who’s orchestrating this?” wrote the staff member, Kyle Parker, after Mr. Zalmayev contacted him to suggest that Mr. Egiazaryan warranted attention for placement on a “no entry” list.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="172" data-total-count="26234" id="story-continues-16" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Egiazaryan mounted his own public relations campaign, denying the charges of anti-Semitism and saying he had fled Russia after death threats against him and his family.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="468" data-total-count="26702" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The case against Mr. Egiazaryan back home involved claims that he defrauded two business partners of $48 million. In a recent interview with The Times, Mr. Egiazaryan said the fraud charges were drummed up by politically connected rivals as part of a corporate raid stripping him of his interest in a joint venture with the city of Moscow to renovate a Stalin-era hotel near Red Square. “All the accusations are built on fabricated documents,” Mr. Egiazaryan said.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="258" data-total-count="26960" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On Feb. 7, 2011,&nbsp;<a title="Associated Press article" href="http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-fearful-russian-lawmaker-flees-us-20110207-002041-431.html">The Associated Press published an article</a>&nbsp;portraying Mr. Egiazaryan as a victim of persecution in Russia. Within days, Mr. Egiazaryan hired&nbsp;<b>BGR</b>&nbsp;Gabara, a London unit of BGR Group, an influential Washington lobbying and public relations firm.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="257" data-total-count="27217" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The firm’s fee was $77,000 a month, plus expenses, to develop a “global media strategy” for Mr. Egiazaryan that portrayed him in a favorable light, including a Washington program in “support of Mr. Egiazaryan’s application to settle in the U.S.”</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="208" data-total-count="27425" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By fall, BGR had scored a coup, helping to place&nbsp;<a title="Wall Street Journal Europe article" href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203914304576628782131283602">an opinion article</a>&nbsp;in The Wall Street Journal Europe, ostensibly written by Mr. Egiazaryan, expressing support for the anticorruption activist Aleksei Navalny.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="161" data-total-count="27586" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A notation with The Journal article did not mention the criminal case, saying merely that Mr. Egiazaryan was living in the United States for his personal safety.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="266" data-total-count="27852" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On April 19, 2011, Mr. Egiazaryan filed suit against Mr. Zalmayev in federal court in Manhattan, charging that he had led a malicious disinformation campaign against him. Mr. Zalmayev countersued, and, in the end, the legal confrontation essentially ended in a draw.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="512" data-total-count="28364" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Egiazaryan’s lawyers had contended that one of their client’s rivals in the hotel deal was behind Mr. Zalmayev’s campaign, suggesting that Mr. Vavilov was merely a front. But documents produced in the discovery process and reviewed by The Times, show that in addition to financing the media campaign against Mr. Egiazaryan, Mr. Vavilov was covering Mr. Zalmayev’s legal costs. As of July 2012, nearly two years before the case ended, Mr. Vavilov had run through more than $1.14 million in legal fees.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="434" data-total-count="28798" id="story-continues-17" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At one hearing, the federal magistrate, Gabriel Gorenstein, complained of the lack of monetary restraint on both sides. “It’s mysterious to me as to why this litigation has ballooned to what it is now,” he said in a hearing. Mr. Vavilov, he later wrote, “obviously has no interest in the integrity of the United States asylum petitioning process. Rather, he apparently harbors an independent interest in harming Egiazaryan.”</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="188" data-total-count="28986" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Egiazaryan remains in the United States. The Justice Department would neither confirm nor deny Russian news media reports that the United States had turned down an extradition request.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="354" data-total-count="29340" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Acquaintances say Mr. Vavilov, who resigned from the Russian senate in 2010, lives as a private citizen of Russia, a status that makes him less susceptible to government interference. “He has no political connection,” said Sergei Guriev, former director of the New Economic School in Moscow, where Mr. Vavilov has donated money and sits on the board.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="182" data-total-count="29522" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Among Mr. Vavilov’s enterprises is a Russian company,&nbsp;<a title="Company website" href="http://www.superox.ru/en/">SuperOx</a>, which is developing high-temperature superconductors to improve magnetic levitation technology for high-speed trains.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="271" data-total-count="29793" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>His foundation has donated more than $1 million to Penn State, where he is a visiting scholar.</b>&nbsp;He appears to relish that connection, displaying a football signed by Joe Paterno, the longtime coach, in his Time Warner pied-à-terre, according to someone who visited there.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="61" data-total-count="29854" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The penthouse was recently put on the market for $68 million.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="76" data-total-count="29930" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are signs that Mr. Vavilov may be turning away from the United States.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="330" data-total-count="30260" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He has taken a leave of absence this year from Penn State. “I think important Russians, just in general, it’s the case that people whose business interests are in Russia now, they feel very uncomfortable being seen as close to America,” said Barry Ickes, an economics professor there who has worked closely with Mr. Vavilov.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="245" data-total-count="30505" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an interview with the magazine Elle Man Russia, which was posted in English in October on his company’s Facebook page, Mr. Vavilov expressed disenchantment with the American people, characterizing them as overly strict and hypercompetitive.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div>