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Comment by killjoywashere | Hacker News Reader

The havens are not the issue. The fact that YCombinator start-ups are funded by Russian oligarchs (via Milner) is an issue. The fact the the US Commerce Secretary is in business with Putin's family is an issue. The fact that Facebook and Twitter are funded by Russian oligarchs (again, via Milner) is an issue. There are a lot of issues here.

These oligarchs have no problem killing people wholesale. You want to give them a positive ROI on their investment? WTF?

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Jeffery Carr wrote about Milner's ties to the FSB/KGB in 2011

http://archive.li/2Lv1b#selection-549.14-549.39

...and got fired from Forbes Magazine for writing about it...

https://twitter.com/JamesFourM/status/915361529012289536

You may not like the guy, for the same political reasons as many people, but shouldn't he be allowed to buy and sell property just like everybody else?

The only issue I find distasteful is how the oligarchs got their money. I wouldn't want to personally make them richer, but isn't it of a nature where you can't point fingers if other people do so? Who am I to stop some startup from taking investment from them?

I'm pretty sure plenty of people wouldn't care. If someone offers you $100m for your business today (Ford), and a Russian company offered you $300m (Gazprom) -- guess which one most would sell to?

Facebook might not like it now, but at the time, you could be quite certain they didn't care.

Next question: do you think the Saudis got early access to the Paradise Papers too? Any chance the Saudi arrests are linked to all this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/world/middleeast/saudi-ar...

I'm not up on the Magnitsky act, but does it make a difference if it's illegal for you to take the $300m from Gazprom?

Well that’s when you set up a subsidiary in a third country which is not following US led sanctions.

Aaaaaand we’ve come full circle.

The root here is that money is fungible. The government has developed legislative tools to ATTEMPT to deter behavior it doesn’t like. Over the past 50 years it has attempted to leverage financial institutions to block the flow of payments based on a miscalculation of how much leverage the USA has over international finance. It requires widespread support over its claims to morality to maintain public support for these fictions and you are merely being exposed to the futility of that particular effort.

Only if you're an American. Afaik it doesn't apply to Europeans and others based outside of the US. Now, that said, if there are sanctions that cannot be avoided then obviously that would be a clear no. Assume companies without sanctions in this example.

EU, Canada, and probably others now have an equivalent of the Magnitsky Act.

Human rights abuses have NEVER been a red line for US cooperation with a foreign government.

Ask yourself who benefits from perpetuating this unique goal post for Russia to maintain McCarthy era paranoia?

> Human rights abuses have NEVER been a red line

Yes they have been and are. See the Magnitsky Act (2012) and Jackson–Vanik amendment (1974) specifically.

But in practice we are trade partners with the Philippines and Saudi Arabia and practically every country on the planet, with very narrowly focused financial sanctions against a few Russian businessmen, while maintaining a unique paranoia against that one country in particular.

Nice joke.

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