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60 Minutes Parties With Prospective Nets'/Barclays Center Owner Mikhail Prokhorov
There is hagiography,
and then there is billionaire worship, and then there is....partying with an oligarch.
Tonight, once respectable 60
Minutes aired
a puff piece on the prospective owner of the Nets and prospective partial
owner of the Barclays Center Arena—Russia's richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov.
And Steve Kroft had fun doing it (expensive wine, a helicopter trip to Russia,
clubbing in Mikhail's section of the club and a lavish meal), while Bruce Ratner
probably had a great time watching it, as well, as none of the controversial issues
about the Atlantic Yards project and Prokhorov's complicity were even touched
upon. (NoLandGrab.org
explains it well, see below. Norman Oder has a
running commentary on the puff piece.)
As the Star
Ledger's
Dave D'Alessandro put it: there was nothing you couldn't find on Wikipedia.
But the most eyebrow-raising part of the segment came from the NBA Commish David
Stern. D'Alessandro
writes:
The most telling part of this profile of Mikhail Prokhorov on CBS'
"Sixty Minutes" was when Steve Kroft asked David Stern whether he
believes the incoming Nets owner is a man of character.
Unless the CBS tape editors took liberties with the videotape, it was pretty
obvious that the NBA commissioner wanted no part of that question:
“I think he’s a man who has passed a very tight security check,”
Stern said in reply, “and nobody has come up with any reason why he shouldn’t
be an NBA owner.”
Of course, nobody ever came up with any reason that Donald Sterling shouldn’t
own the Clippers, other than the fact that he just paid $2.7 million to settle
a suit that branded him a racist landlord.
In other words, in today’s NBA, it takes all kinds. As that Russian financial
reporter said during the segment, “You had robber barons, we have oligarchs.”
So when it comes to NBA ownership, it’s all about stacks of money –
and a willingness to flaunt them – so that is what the CBS program made
the emphasis of its 14-minute segment.
We saw Mikky at his opulent home. We saw Mikky’s Maybach. We saw a model
of his $45 million yacht (where is it docked? He didn’t know) and his
guns and his workout room and his, uh, food.
We get it: He’s rich, and comfortable with it...
Something you could learn on Wikiepedia or the puff piece was that Prokhorov made
his big wealth through a rigged bid to buy Norilsk Nickel and then lucked out
when he was forced to sell right before the world financial crisis because of
some unseemly accusations of prostitution running in France.
Rigged bid, then a bit of luck. Sound familiar? Ratner and Prokhorov's are two
peas in a pod.
Ratner had a rigged bid (and no bid) to get 22 acres in the heart of Brooklyn
and then a bit (a lot!) of luck finding perhaps the only man in the world willing
to bail out Ratner's land grab dreams because of his own hoop dreams.
Hoop dreams? Not quite, Prokhorov tells The
Times (in what appears to be a slight PR blitz, with another article
in Bloomberg
Markets Magazine):
“I view this investment as a business opportunity. I expect
this asset to be worth around a billion dollars after the new arena is built
and the team gets to the top of the N.B.A.”
And in the Bloomberg
article, the real motive (oh so important to Brooklyn, New York and the NBA):
.[Owning the Nets is] about opening up other business opportunities
in the U.S.,” Prokhorov says, sipping tea at 2 a.m. at his hotel in Krasnoyarsk.
“If I want to do something else, people won’t say, ‘Who’s
that?’ They’ll say, ‘That’s the owner of the Nets.’”
Also in the The Times' only slightly more revealing article, we have
the following, about which Forest
City Ratner may or may not be familiar:
...Asked if he had ever paid a bribe, he said that he had.
“It was 15 years ago, the last time,” [Prokhorov] said. “I
need to be frank.”
Here is what NoLandGrab
thought about the 60 Minutes 13 minutes of cotton candy:
Glasses of Chateau Lafite '95 drunk by Steve Kroft at Mikhail Prokhorov's
dinner table?
Several.
Sexy Russian models partied with by Steve Kroft in Mikhail Prokhorov's favorite
night club?
Twenty.
Tough questions asked by Steve Kroft of Mikhail Prokhorov during their 60 Minutes
inteview?
Zero.
Value to Bruce Ratner of the absence of any questions about Atlantic Yards?
Priceless.
(Update: One other really important fact came out of the interview with 60
Minutes: Prokhorov really likes women, especially ones that can
cook! At least that is what he says.)
Posted: 3.28.10
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