Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [52]
Soros arrived in the morning, sporting a new tan. He was awed, as I was, by Stalin’s famous Black Sea residence. He and Chernomyrdin met as old friends; Chernomyrdin jokingly recalled the anti-Communist sermon he gave Soros at their previous meeting. Now it was George’s turn to lecture. Over lunch, he extolled the virtues of open markets and corporate transparency and promised that his investment of $3 billion would change the attitude of others in the West who considered Russia an unsafe place for their money.
Boris beamed. The three of them shook hands on a deal. Then Boris and George took a walk along the beach to talk out the details, after which George took me aside.
“Are you being paid by Boris for arranging this?” he asked.
“Of course not,” I said. “I thought I was working for you.”
“Good. Are you still a Russian citizen by any chance?”
“No, I lost my citizenship when I left the USSR and I naturalized as a U.S. citizen ten years ago.”
“That is a problem,” said George. “You see, Boris and I agreed we would set up a vehicle for this, fifty-fifty, and that I should control it, but the law requires that more than half of the ownership be domestic. We need a Russian citizen whom I can trust.”
“I have a daughter by my first marriage, in Moscow, who is a Russian citizen, although she is thinking of moving to the United States.”
“That’s good enough,” said George. “Get a copy of her ID to my people as soon as we get to Moscow. We will give her a quarter percent.”
Suddenly, I felt a hint of the greed that drove the Borises and Georges of this world. Just by being in the right place at the right time, I stood to gain millions.
Then it all unraveled. The plan to take over Gazprom did not last twenty-four hours after Soros’s arrival in Moscow. There he met with Boris Nemtsov, who explained to George that back in March, when he joined the government, it was decided that from now on everything had to be strictly by the book. He strongly advised George against the Gazprom deal, because it had been organized in the old ways of the robber barons. It would be a blow to the government’s new attempts at fair play.
George immediately changed his mind, reverting from investor to disinterested helper—or so it seemed. He agreed to lend $1 billion to the Russian budget—to keep it going until the arrival of Eurobond proceeds—and he dropped out of the Gazprom sweepstakes.
George was gloomy as we drove to The Club so he could deliver the news to Boris. He broke his silence only once: “You know, I envy you. You got yourself a ticket in the front row—with my money—and you get to enjoy the show. I cannot afford that. The moment I pop up, I become a player.”
In The Club he told Boris that the Gazprom deal was off. Boris could barely control himself. As soon as George left, he exploded: “How could he do it? We shook hands! Did he really believe those clowns? Doesn’t he know that Nemtsov’s sole role is to act as ‘Chubais with a human face’ for foreign consumption? I personally recruited him for that role back in March when we still were one team. I was honest with George—I brought him to Sochi so that he could see how the system works. Potanin just puts up smokescreens. George should know better!”
I did not know what to say. Of course I was upset, not least because my own chances of becoming a millionaire had just evaporated. Was George really so naïve? Or did he know something that we did not? George was my boss, but I was beginning to think Boris understood the Kremlin better than he did.
In fact, it turned out that George was still in the game. Boris Jordan, the American-Russian investment banker, soon talked him into backing