Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [25]
One day in the early fall, Boris called to invite me to The Club to discuss “an urgent matter.”
For most people in Moscow, The Club was a famous and mysterious place. A visit there was proof of one’s status. The quality of wine and the artistry of the chef were legendary. In the wake of the assassination attempt on Boris in 1994, the security was impressive, including metal detectors, closed-circuit television monitors, an ID registry, and the presence of many attentive young men with the demeanor and habits of the old KGB Kremlin guards.
Over the bar, which also served as a waiting room, hung the first HDTV in Moscow. There was a white grand piano, played occasionally by one of Boris’s old friends, an elderly Jew in a white suit. In the corner stood a stuffed crocodile, for reasons unknown. Boris was always behind schedule, so his visitors usually had to wait. The atmosphere was supposed to help time pass pleasantly for his unending stream of visitors.
On any given day at The Club you could rub elbows with ministers and TV personalities, deputies of the Duma and top journalists, provincial governors and Western fund managers, as well as people no one knew, such as an unremarkable young man in a jeans suit who often sat in a corner: Sasha Litvinenko. Sasha and I saw each other at The Club several times before we were ever introduced.
This time I was rushed straight through the bar into Boris’s office via a small foyer, in the middle of which was a little burbling Baroque fountain.
“What do you think, would George be interested in an investment project of about $50 million?” Boris began before I even got in the door.
After the fiasco over the loan for ORT, it seemed pointless to go to Soros with another proposal like this, but before I had a chance to say a word Boris began throwing information at me. “This time, I don’t have an unprofitable television station but a real, profit-making oil company, vertically integrated, with an oil field, a refinery, and an export terminal—a crown jewel of the Soviet energy complex. We are gearing up for the auction and are just a bit short of cash. So I’d like to propose to George to go into this with me 50-50.”
“Wait a minute,” I objected. “They don’t allow foreigners into these auctions.”
“Not a problem,” exclaimed Boris. “A Russian legal entity is set up, with George having 50 percent minus one share. By world standards, the oil reserves here would be worth maybe $5 billion. Less the political risk, of course. Tell George he must agree. Here’s the documentation package. This is really urgent. I could fly to New York at any minute.”
I carried the offer to New York and was surprised to discover that Soros was willing to consider it. He pondered it for two weeks. I watched him, making bets with myself: would he cross the line and join in the gold rush of robber capitalism?
George Soros does not hide the fact that he is made up of two personalities: a shrewd fund manager acting in the interests of his shareholders, and a social reformer who strives to change the world for the better. To avoid a conflict of interest, he prefers not to do business in those countries where he does philanthropy. But this was an opportunity of a lifetime.
In the end, he declined. “This package is worth nothing,” he said. “I’ll bet you a hundred to one that the Communists will win and cancel all these auctions. And my advice to Boris is this: he should not do it either. He is putting into this all he has got, and he will lose it all.”
Soros was not alone in this evaluation. Boris went around to all his Western and Eastern partners, from the bosses of Mercedes in Germany to the owners of Daewoo in Korea, but nobody wanted to buy into Sibneft. Everyone thought that Chubais’s gambit with dubious auctions would not last a month after Yeltsin’s departure, which seemed all but certain.
In the end, Boris did find a partner, an unknown oil trader named Roman (Roma) Abramovich. Roma was a shy, rosy-cheeked fellow of twenty-nine, slightly pudgy, who wore jeans and a sweater and who