Russian oligarchs/billionaires bring money they call investments/donations, but, what they really want is espionage.
Russia has a lot of oil and it uses it to create dependency through sales AND the money then goes to it's favorite task of infiltrating, spying and ultimately dismantling The West. Trump's win for the presidency was a real victory to them. And Trump thinks there is money at the end of the Russian rainbow.January 15, 2019
By Owen Daugherty
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (click here) quietly removed a Russian-billionaire from its Board of Trustees last year after the Treasury Department sanctioned him for advancing Russia’s "malign activities," according to a report on Tuesday.
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty reports that Viktor Vekselberg was taken off of MIT’s board.
"In April 2018, as a result of [the Treasury Department] adding Mr. Vekselberg to its specially designated nationals list, MIT reviewed its legal obligations and suspended Mr. Vekselberg's Corporation membership,” an MIT spokeswoman, Kimberly Allen, told the news outlet in an email....
The value of the Russian Ruble is 0.015 USA dollar. Not much of a rainbow when you really think about it. One has to remove all laws against money laundering in order to make the Russia Ruble worth anything. I suppose altering the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act might help, right Donald?
14 January 2019
By Hasan Chowdhury
Russia is preparing an investment in Bitcoin (click here) to replace the US dollar as a reserve currency in a bid to tackle US sanctions, according to a Russian economist with close ties to the Kremlin.
Vladislav Ginko, an economist at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, a state-funded institution, said the government is taking steps to minimise the impact of US sanctions that have hit the Russian rouble by replacing some of its US dollar reserves with the world’s most popular cryptocurrency.
US sanctions on Russia over the past year have come after the poisoning of former Russian military officer Sergei Skripal. Mr Ginko believes Russia’s de-dollarisation decision is fundamentally a move to “protect its national interests” due to a possible interruption of “US nominated payments flows for Russian oil and gas” and claims investment could be as much as $10bn (£7.8bn).
Cryptocurrencies have seen a surge of interest in Russia, with President Vladimir Putin expressing interest in the digital assets in recent months. Mr Ginko believes Bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency industry now account for 8pc of Russia’s GDP, and investment to bolster the country’s reserves with Bitcoin could start as soon as February....
