January 30, 2018

Trump Administration Admits It Cribbed From Forbes Magazine To Create “Oligarch List”

Featuring: Elizabeth Rosenberg

Source: Buzzfeed

Journalist: John Hudson

The striking similarity between a newly released Treasury Department report of Russian oligarchs and a 2017 list of wealthy Russians published in Forbes magazine is no coincidence.

On Tuesday, a Treasury Department spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the unclassified annex of the report was derived from Forbes’ ranking of the “200 richest businessmen in Russia 2017.”

The revelation is likely to invite criticisms of the thoroughness of the Treasury Department’s report and reinforce the notion that the list is primarily a who’s who of the Russian elite rather than an official accounting of Kremlin-linked political corruption as some US lawmakers intended.

Congress mandated the report in a law President Trump grudgingly signed in August. At the time, the president called the legislation “seriously flawed.”

Read the full article here.

Author

  • Elizabeth Rosenberg

    Former Senior Fellow and Director, Energy, Economics and Security Program

    Elizabeth Rosenberg is a former Senior Fellow and Director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. In this capacity, she publ...