Atlantic Yards Sugar Daddy Is Also A Russian Oligarch
Bruce Ratner, the mastermind behind the Atlantic Yards Project and part-owner of the New Jersey Nets signed a $200 million deal today to give Russion oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov (left, via USAToday) an 80% stake in the basketball team. Mr. Prokhorov wrote on his LiveJournal blog (translated from Russian by Google) that "participation in [this deal] was made possible by the world crisis (never in the history of foreigners owned NBA)."The deal solidifies resources behind the project, which has stalled over a six year battle with residents of Prospect Heights and Fort Greene who oppose the use of eminent domain for private industry. A press release sent out by Forest City Ratner said:
This partnership will ensure the successful completion of a world-class entertainment venue in Brooklyn, the relocation of the NBA Nets basketball team and the economic and housing benefits of the Atlantic Yards Project.
In accordance with the agreement, entities to be formed by Onexim Group will invest $200 million and make certain contingent funding commitments to acquire 45% of the arena project and 80 percent of the NBA team, and the right to purchase up to 20% of the Atlantic Yards Development Company, which will develop the non-arena real estate.
Mr. Prokhorov described on his blog an outline of the proposal he sent to Forest City Ratner, the development company which also constructed Metrotech Center and the Atlantic Terminal Mall.
1. Commercial terms:
- ONEXIM extend credit to build a new arena in Brooklyn secured a substantial stake in the project.- Controlling the team the New Jersey goes to the group for a symbolic price.- Under the deal the group will attract a similar loan to western banks (I think, if successful, the deal will simply unique!).2. Qualitative criteria:- Russia will receive an equal place in the elite world of basketball.- Access to all the modern technologies and training techniques with the ability to use them in Russia.- Placement of Russia’s leading coaches and managers in the NBA.- Send the best students in the training camps for the NBA.
Mr. Prokhorov is known in Russian as a playboy, and was arrested in France in 2007 for soliciting prostitutes. He was released days later without being charged. Historian and political scientist Eric Toussaint writes at the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, Russia’s "oligarchs emerged as a result of the implosion of the bureaucratic system of the East and capitalist restoration in the late 1980s and the 1990s. The US government, the IMF and the World Bank gave their active support to the Russian president, Boris Yeltsin (and partly guided his footsteps) in the rapid and gigantic wave of privatisations that he imposed on Russia. Those privatisations constitute the systematic pillage of Russia’s public goods in favour of the oligarchs."
He adds, "Privatisation was a vast act of pillage that benefited the oligarchs who invested part of their booty in the West, so that it was laundered and out of reach of the law."
