Follow the money
Back in December, it was reported that if Vladimir Putin were interested in influencing the US election, there wasn’t just one single reason, there were 500 billion of them. Because of Russian attacks on the Ukraine, President Obama brought sanctions on the Russian government. These sanctions are preventing the completion of an oil deal between Exxon and the Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft, a deal worth $500B.
It stands to reason that Russia would do everything in its power to make that deal happen, since the drop in oil prices recently has put its economy on some shaky footing. So it’s hardly surprising that Putin would prefer a US president who was friendly towards him. Now, if you think I’m going to argue that Putin therefore put Trump in the White House, you’re wrong. Where I’m going is more subtle than that.
We know that Putin benefits if he can inject half a trillion dollars into his economy, but who benefits on the US side? Exxon, obviously, and their former CEO is on track to become the next Secretary of State. Anyone else? Same on the Russian side, the Rosneft oil company would also be a beneficiary, and this is where things get really interesting.
Rosneft just sold a 19.5% stake in the company to a mystery buyer. Some of the investment group making the purchase can be traced to Qatar, but at least half is buried in an organization registered in Cayman Islands, a notorious haven for money laundering and tax evasion.
Meanwhile back in our country, Joint Resolution 41 has been introduced in the US House by Bill Huizenga (R-MI). It consists of a single sentence, whose effect would be to “disapprove” of the SEC regulation relating to “Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers.” If you go down the rabbit hole a bit further, that rule requires “oil, gas, and mining companies to publicly disclose payments made to foreign governments to access their natural resource.”
In other words, any company that is paying some country (e.g., Russia) for access to their oil would not longer be required to say who they paid nor how much they paid.
Does that mean that the mystery investor is American? Not necessarily. But it does mean that there is a concerted effort to hide that information coincidentally with a $500 billion dollar deal going down. At that, to me, is worthy of note.
