U.S. LOBBYISTS WORK FOR RUSSIA

FT - MARCH 16, 2022 - A collection of well-connected lobbyists and lawyers in Washington have made millions of dollars over the past eight years by working for Russian clients with links to the Kremlin, according to a Financial Times analysis.

Public data collated by OpenSecrets and examined by the FT shows that Washington-based power brokers have earned nearly $50mn since 2014 by representing high-level Russian clients. Many firms are now cancelling such contracts in the wake of western sanctions introduced following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Campaigners have questioned whether they should have been working with the clients in the first place, especially since some have at times been subject to sanctions after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

Anna Massoglia, investigations manager at OpenSecrets, which tracks spending on lobbying in the US, said: “Foreign agents and lobbyists took millions of dollars from Russian clients before trying to distance themselves after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine despite mounting accusations of human rights abuses.”

The data analysed by the FT comes from two sources: the US Senate and the Department of Justice, both of which maintain registers of lobbying activity. The disclosures included in those databases show some of the most powerful firms in Washington have represented Russian interests for years.

Two well-known lobbying groups in particular have done lucrative work for Russian clients in recent years: Mercury and BGR.

Mercury partner Bryan Lanza, who was an adviser to former president Donald Trump, has made $2.3mn since 2014 by representing two big Russian clients: Sovcombank, a midsized Russian bank, and EN+, the metals group founded by Oleg Deripaska.

The Senate filings show David Vitter, a former Republican senator and now a partner at lobbying firm Mercury, was writing letters to lawmakers as recently as last month urging them not to impose sanctions on Sovcombank.

Doing so would be “extremely counterproductive”, he warned, due to the bank’s “deep ties to US and western institutions”. The lobbying effort did not work, however: just weeks later, the Biden administration froze the bank’s assets that touch the US financial system and prohibited US citizens from dealing with the lender.

Mercury has worked for EN+ for years, and played a crucial role in advocating for sanctions to be removed from the company in 2018. While the company was under sanctions, Mercury listed as its client Greg Barker, the former UK Conservative minister who was then its non-executive chair. Barker resigned from the company earlier this month.

Mercury has in recent weeks cancelled both contracts. It declined to comment further.

BGR meanwhile, has represented the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, and Uranium One, a mining company owned by the Russian state-owned nuclear corporation Rosatom. BGR is known in Washington for representing foreign governments, including those of Bangladesh, Bahrain and Kazakhstan. One of its founders, Haley Barbour, was a former Republican governor of Mississippi.

BGR has cancelled the contracts. It did not respond to a request to comment.

Other large contracts have gone to well-connected individuals rather than firms.

One of those is Vin Roberti, a high-spending donor who has given $683,000 to Democrats since 2018 and who has for years represented Nord Stream 2, earning $9.1mn in the process. He is chair of public policy firm Roberti Global.

Nord Stream 2, which is a subsidiary of the Russian energy company Gazprom, has been controversial for years, with the US government warning that it threatened to undermine Europe’s energy security. The Senate filings show Roberti lobbied members of Congress over the threat of potential US sanctions as recently as January.

Last month however, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, put the project on pause after Moscow recognised two breakaway regions of Ukraine as independent republics. Three days later, Roberti Global terminated the contract. The firm declined to comment.

Adam Waldman meanwhile, a Washington lawyer whose star-studded list of clients has included actor Johnny Depp, has worked directly for Deripaska.

Deripaska was sanctioned alongside six other wealthy business people in 2018 because of his close ties to the Kremlin. The US Treasury noted at the time that he had been investigated for money laundering and accused of threatening the lives of business rivals.

Deripaska dismissed the allegations last year as “guesses, rumours and balderdash”.

Waldman represented his interests in the US, even taking on a commission directly from Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, in 2010 to lobby the US to grant Deripaska a visa. Lavrov wrote to Waldman at the time: “I believe that the involvement of your firm will contribute to the ongoing efforts aimed at achieving a successful resolution of this problem.”

Waldman did not respond to a request to comment.

Lobbyists have privately defended their work, pointing out that Russia was not regarded by the US as a pariah state until recently.

One said: “Sometimes you reject work for being too controversial, but until the last few weeks, many of these clients did not fit that bill. We have all been caught out by how fast this situation has moved, and we have had to respond accordingly.”

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