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Why is this surprising? When Milner came virtually out of the blue (or red, as the case may be) a few years ago, it seemed obvious that he was a conduit/laundry
by pinewurst 9y ago
Why is this surprising? When Milner came virtually out of the blue (or red, as the case may be) a few years ago, it seemed obvious that he was a conduit/laundry for oligarch cash at least. I even remember telling someone at the time that if we were chosen for YC, we didn't want Milner's dirty money.
The additional Kremlin state ties seem only an additional technicality. (I mean the formalized acknowledgement of what I presumed existent.)
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> The additional Kremlin state ties seem only an additional technicality The line between investing for potentially-corrupt interests and acting at the behest of a geopolitical competitor is night and day. DST didn't just hand cash over to companies. They conducted extensive diligence and sat on Boards.
- pinewurst 9y agoMaybe that wasn't good phrasing. I'm trying to say that I never saw the division between those corrupt interests and the nation state they belonged to. I always felt they were acting in their national interests. What will be interesting here is how fast it falls off HN.
- toyg 9y agoAlready the title has been changed to take his name off.
- doktrin 9y agoI often see links on HN renamed to reflect the original title.
- nether 9y agoSigh. HN has always done this to reduce editorializing in headlines. You're an oldtimer; how are you unaware of this? Remember your priors.
- dang 9y ago> to take his name off You assumed wrong. A moderator changed it because the submitted title ("Yuri Milner's money is from Putin (via Gazprom, oligarchs, et al)") was an obvious violation of the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We often put individual names back in HN titles when the audience here can be expected to recognize the name. I've done so above. That's a rather specialized moderation practice, which not everyone who edits HN titles knows about. The basic edit was valid and routine.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- throw2016 9y agoThis doesn't make sense. What makes money 'dirty'? What about banks like Goldman Sachs? Is their money 'clean'? What about the Saudi and UAE investment funds? How does one decide what is 'dirty' and 'clean' money and identify it?
- andybak 9y agoI'm conflicted on this. The good old-fashioned lefty in me wants to agree and say "yes - follow the money. Power has tendrils everywhere and they are annoyingly predictable and persistent". However I do have the feeling that Russia's current behaviour is quantitatively if not qualitatively different. In it's scale, it's cynicism and in it's deliberate single mindedness. I'm not a great believer in good vs evil on the geopolitical stage but a move this blatant needs to be resisted because if it succeeds it will become the new normal.
- jgome 9y agoIt is normal (be it "lefty" democratic, or republican US presidents) for the US government to use its power to destroy other countries and steal its resources... And yet here you are discussing "cynicism and [...] deliberate single mindedness". As a lefty, you fail to put things in perspective... But I guess it's just not convenient, sometimes, is it?
- andybak 9y agoYou might have to reword that - I'm honestly having difficulty parsing it.
- jgome 9y agoWhat I mean is exactly what I said: start by looking at the dirt your own country may have BEFORE looking at someone else's dirt. You may learn a thing or two about your government, the upper classes in your country, the racism and xenophobia they use as a way to get more power elsewhere, the reasons the other governments have to do what they do, etc.
- dawhizkid 9y agoHe "purposely" overpaid by $50m for a house in Los Altos -> http://www.businessinsider.com/yuri-milners-100-million-silicon-valley-mansion-is-only-worth-half-what-he-paid-for-it-2012-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/yuri-milners-100-million-sili...
- SamReidHughes 9y agoLos Altos Hills, actually.
- hndamien 9y agoI'd say he "purposefully" undervalued it.
- argonaut 9y agoIt seems obvious now, but you only have to look at an HN thread 6 years ago discussing Yuri Milner to see that many people in tech (or at least on HN), including pg, did not believe Yuri was an extension of the Russian state: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143604. (Of course, many also recognized this as obvious at the time).
- pdog 9y agoPaul Graham on Yuri Milner at the time: "If there's one mistake this story makes, it's in trying to come up with complicated theories about why Yuri does well. He's simply smart." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894
- sheetjs 9y agoAt least the top reply at the time, by @mapgrep, addressed the concern: > Come now, Paul. Yes, Yuri is smart. But he also has huge sacks of money to throw around, most of which comes from oligarch Alisher Usmanov > It's kind of sad, to me at least, the extent to which a sort of amorality has really taken hold in Silicon Valley. It's nice that he's helped your investments out, Paul, but where does Yuri's money come from? Have you looked into him and Usmanov? I mean, the sad thing about Yuri Milner to me isn't that he's an ostentatious outsider, it's that he fits in so darn well in Silicon Valley. I wish this was the sort of place that looked completely alien to someone from Moscow or Wall Street. Every year, it seems that's less and less the case, at least in terms of culture. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143960
- throaway3424 9y ago“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his livelihood depends on his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair & also Charlie Munger.
- notyourday 9y agoYC, the VCs with ethics only when it is at the expense of others.
- paganel 9y ago> it seemed obvious that he was a conduit/laundry for oligarch cash at least For what it's worth said oligarch, Alisher Usmanov, is also a major shareholder of Arsenal Football Club, one of the English Premier League's top clubs. Most of the club supporters don't care one bit from where the transfers money comes.