RE:Open season on Russia oligarchs -first casualties
A. The U.S. law, if passed by both houses of Congress and signed by Obama,
would authorize the president to impose sanctions against Russian official
s or their associates or family members involved in the “expropriation of private
or public assets for personal gain, corruption related to government contracts or
the extraction of natural resources, bribery, or the facilitation or transfer
of the proceeds of corruption to foreign jurisdictions.”
------------------------------------------
Seems to me, the US does not intend to catch the biggest fish...
SOROS MEETS THE CLINTONS
Around the time that George Soros initially launched his Manhattan-based Open Society Institute, he established what would prove to be a warm and enduring relationship with Bill and
Hillary Clinton, the new American President and First Lady. When the Clintons took office in early 1993, they faced the daunting task of helping the collapsed Soviet empire rise from its ruins and cultivate a harmonious relationship with the United States. To lead this endeavor, President Clinton appointed three men: Treasury Department official Lawrence Summers, Vice President
Al Gore, and soon-to-be State Department official Strobe Talbott. Talbott in particular was given a large degree of authority, prompting some observers to dub him as Clinton's “Russian policy czar.” It so happened that Talbot had an exceptionally high regard for the financial expertise of George Soros—describing him as “a national resource, indeed, a national treasure”—and thus he recruited the billionaire to serve as a key advisor on U.S.-Russian matters.
Soros, in turn, had connections with a young economist whom he had been
funding—Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Harvard Institute for International Development. The U.S. Agency for International Development assigned Sachs' Institute to oversee Russia's transformation to a market economy after more than seven decades of communism. As a consequence of this assignment, Sachs and his team essentially represented the United States as official economic advisors to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Soros worked closely with Sachs on this project, and the pair held enormous sway over Yeltsin. So great was their influence, in fact, that on one occasion Soros quipped that “the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire.” But before long, members of Sachs's team became involved in massive corruption, exploiting for personal gain their access to Russia's political and economic leaders. Their actions contributed to the collapse of the Russian economy and to the diversion of some $100 billion out of the country. Though Sachs himself was not accused of profiting personally from these activities, he resigned as director of the Harvard Institute in May 1999, under a dark cloud of scandal. The U.S. House Banking Committee investigated the matter and called Soros to testify. The billionaire denied culpability but admitted that he had used insider access in an illegal deal to acquire a large portion of Sidanko Oil. Soros further
acknowledged in Congressional testimony that some of the missing Russian assets had made their way into his personal investment portfolio. House Banking Committee chairman Jim Leach
characterized the entire sordid affair as “one of the greatest social robberies in human history.”
https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977