Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s poodle?
by digby
This story hasn’t gotten much coverage in all the recent din, but it seems to me that it’s pretty important:
When the Trump administration announced last month that it was lifting sanctions against a trio of companies controlled by an influential Russian oligarch, it cast the move as tough on Russia and on the oligarch, arguing that he had to make painful concessions to get the sanctions lifted.
But a binding confidential document signed by both sides suggests that the agreement the administration negotiated with the companies controlled by the oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, may have been less punitive than advertised.
The deal contains provisions that free him from hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while leaving him and his allies with majority ownership of his most important company, the document shows.
With the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election continuing to shadow President Trump, the administration’s decision to lift sanctions on Mr. Deripaska’s companies has become a political flash point. House Democrats won widespread Republican support last week for their efforts to block the sanctions relief deal. Democratic hopes of blocking the administration’s decision have been stifled by the Republican-controlled Senate.
The Treasury Department announced the sanctions last April against Mr. Deripaska, six other Russian oligarchs and their companies, including Mr. Deripaska’s aluminum giant, Rusal, as well as the holding company that owns it, EN+, and another company it controls, EuroSibEnergo. Like other oligarchs, Mr. Deripaska is closely allied with the Kremlin.
The sanctions were in retaliation for “a range of malign activity around the globe” by Russia, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said at the time.
The personal sanctions on Mr. Deripaska went into effect immediately, but those on his companies were delayed several times, and Mr. Mnuchin struck a conciliatory tone toward the companies. He clarified that the goalof the sanctions was “to change the behavior” of Mr. Deripaska, and “not to put Rusal out of business,” given the company’s pivotal role as a global supplier of aluminum.
Mr. Mnuchin indicated that the Treasury Department might be willing to lift the sanctions from Mr. Deripaska’s companies if he reduced his stake to less than 50 percent.
Last month, Mr. Mnuchin announced that the department had reached an agreement to lift the sanctions on Mr. Deripaska’s companies in exchange for a commitment “to significantly diminish Deripaska’s ownership and sever his control.”
The department laid out the broad contours of the agreement in a letter to Congress, which was released publicly. But the confidential document, which was not released publicly but was reviewed by The New York Times, describes the deal in considerably greater detail, including proprietary information about the corporate restructuring, much of it not previously reported.
It shows that the sanctions relief deal will allow Mr. Deripaska to wipe out potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in debt by transferring some of his shares to VTB, a Russian government-owned bank under limited United States sanctions that had lent him large sums of money.
The confidential document, titled “Terms of Removal,” also shows that the agreement would leave allies of Mr. Deripaska and the Kremlin with significant stakes in his companies. The document is signed by executives representing Mr. Deripaska’s three companies as well as the official in the Treasury Department who oversees the division that handled the negotiations.
The new information could lend ammunition to criticism that the Trump administration either knowingly let a Kremlin-allied oligarch off easy, or was outmaneuvered by a sophisticated legal and lobbying campaignfunded by his companies.
The House got a bunch of Republicans to come over to block this weird deal and the Senate got 11 Republicans to vote against it coming up just 2 shy of the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster. Nobody really understands what the big hurry to give old Oleg this big break but it’s at least a little bit suspicious.
One of the theories is that Trump’s sanctions on Chinese aluminum ended up hurting American industries so much that they felt they had to let up Russian aluminum, which is very convenient. There are also suggestions that Treasury was outmaneuvered by the crack Deripaska legal team. Possible, of course. Trump’s team really is incompetent on every level. But it’s also possible that Mnuchin ordered this because Trump told him that he wants “good relations” with Russia — or something.
Whatever the reason, the whole thing is politically absurd considering the boiling water Trump is in at the moment. Why anyone in his orbit, much less Trump himself, would do something like this, at this time, is simply mind-boggling. But then, no matter what, he just keeps licking Putin’s boots no matter how hot the water gets, raising more and more suspicions, so I guess this is just par for the course.
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