The Council on Foreign Relations is facing a storm of criticism after recently accepting a $12 million donation from
Ukrainian-born oligarch Len Blavatnik, The Post has learned.
In a tersely worded letter, a group of 56 high-profile policy wonks pleaded with the posh think tank’s brass to give back the cash from
Blavatnik, branding the controversial billionaire as a crony of Vladimir Putin.Blavatnik — a metals-and energy tycoon who owns Warner Music and has rubbed elbows with everybody from Bill Clinton to Ed Sheeran — “acquired his initial wealth by way of highly questionable transactions in tandem with the regimes of [ex-Kazakhstan president] Nursultan Nazarbayev and Vladimir Putin,” according to the Sept. 18 letter obtained by the Post.
“Blavatnik protected that wealth in part through strategic alliances with security personnel and practices that would surely be considered criminal in any democracy,” the letter claimed.
A spokesman for Blavatnik referred questions about the letter to the CFR, whose president Richard Haass responded in a Sept. 26 letter of his own, in which he said the CFR had received an overwhelmingly “positive response” about Blavatnik’s donation from its “members and others.”
https://nypost.com/2019/10/07/council-on-foreign-relations-faces-backlash-over-12m-len-blavatnik-donation/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttonsКузини з Україні та колишнього СССР обплутали світ краденими грішми і поставили усіх у залежність від себе...
