Isle of paradise
Milner, 55, studied theoretical physics at Moscow State University before moving to the United States, where he attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1990s and then worked for the World Bank in Washington. Milner’s venture capital firm, appears here.) The Path to Silicon Valley We are making money for our limited partners, and we are giving money back to them. Milner sees it, the story is similarly simple - “nothing more than business,” he said, adding: “We are getting money, and we are putting them in Facebook and Twitter. VTB and Gazprom said the transactions were both sound investments, not motivated by political considerations.Īs Mr.
There is nothing illegal about foreign state-owned institutions investing in American companies.
Carpenter added, “Oligarchs who receive significant amounts of financial support from Russian banks like VTB or Sberbank or Gazprombank have to pass above a political threshold, meaning such support requires the explicit or tacit approval of those at the top of Russia’s crony capitalist system.” “Kremlin-connected institutions make investments with strategic interests in mind - not just commercial interests but state interests as well,” said Michael Carpenter, the Russia director at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, who is now senior director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Milner said in a pair of recent interviews that the Russian government money was no different from the financing he had received from his many other investors around the world.Įven so, his use of the state-directed apparatus employed by so many Russian oligarchs to enrich themselves shows how the Kremlin has extended its long financial arm not only to his company but to some of America’s technology giants. Milner or his companies had any connection to the propaganda operation. Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators are examining how Russians linked to the Kremlin turned the sites into garden hoses of bogus news stories and divisive political ads, and whether they coordinated with the Trump campaign. Milner’s current investments is a real estate venture founded and partly owned by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser.įacebook, Twitter and other social media sites have become a major focus of federal investigations into Kremlin interference in the 2016 election. His companies sold those holdings several years ago, but he retains investments in several other large technology companies and continues to make new deals. Milner’s companies came to own more than 8 percent of Facebook and 5 percent of Twitter, helping earn him a place on various lists of the world’s most powerful business people.