If you want to do business in Moscow, it helps to hire a pal of President Vladimir Putin.
That’s the conclusion reached by investigators for Transparency International-Russia, who looked into one of the biggest deals in that country’s history: BP’s 2013 sale of its stake in Russia’s third-largest oil company to state-owned oil giant Rosneft for a hefty amount of Rosneft shares and $12.5 billion in cash.
A BP station in Moscow. (Photo: REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov)