“I spent 10 years there, so I understand how issues work,” stated Taurasi, who has performed for Russian groups and is the main scorer in W.N.B.A. historical past. “It’s delicate.”
UMMC Yekaterinburg paid Taurasi a reported $1.5 million to skip the 2015 W.N.B.A. season and play solely in Russia.
“It was a really private selection,” Taurasi advised The New York Occasions on the time. “My agent stated it might be financially irresponsible to not do it.”
UMMC Yekaterinburg, primarily based within the metropolis of the identical title and roughly a two-hour flight from Moscow, is managed by the oligarch Iskander Makhmudov and his enterprise associate, Andrei Kozitsyn. Makhmudov and Kozitsyn head Ural Mining and Metallurgical Firm, which mines commodities like copper, zinc, coal, gold and silver, and is certainly one of Russia’s prime producers.
They have been a part of a wave of oligarchs who amassed their wealth after the collapse of the Soviet Union by investing in industries like fuel, oil and treasured metals. Following Putin’s ascent, oligarchs like Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Prokhorov purchased into distinguished sports activities franchises, just like the soccer groups Chelsea and Arsenal F.C. and the N.B.A.’s Nets.
Whereas some house owners had reliable causes for investing in sports activities, others who funded or bought groups have been doing so at the very least partially to look extra reliable to American and British authorities, in line with Karen Greenaway, a retired F.B.I. agent who investigated worldwide corruption and spent part of her profession within the former Soviet Union. Makhmudov has been linked to felony exercise and has enterprise associations with different oligarchs tied to organized crime in Russia, in line with civil fits lodged in the USA and the UK by opponents and legislation enforcement officers.
Makhmudov was accused of being concerned in a scheme to take over the Russian aluminum business, in line with a civil case filed in New York in 2000. In it, Makhmudov and two different oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska and Michael Cherney, have been accused of a racketeering scheme which concerned fraud, bribery and tried homicide. They contested the allegations, and the case was dismissed in the USA as a result of the choose consented to maneuver it to Russia.
