Mitt Romney's Bain Made Millions On Big Tobacco In U.S., Russia

[bushisanidiot]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09/mitt-romney-bain-tobacco_n_1949812.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&utm_hp_ref=politics

"At the time, Romney was CEO of Bain & Co., the Boston-based consulting firm that launched his white-collar career and led him into the high-stakes world of corporate buyouts. Although Romney's activities helming the private equity giant Bain Capital have drawn significant attention, his role at Bain & Co. has received almost no public scrutiny. A Huffington Post investigation into Bain's tobacco work found that the consulting firm helped Philip Morris increase its revenues in the U.S., and aided two other tobacco titans as they vied to move forcefully into the Russian market.

It's all a long way from some of the deals Romney has used to position himself as the godfather of the big box -- investing in companies like Staples and The Sports Authority -- and a wholesome salesman to the middle class. The modern family spends a lot of time shuttling between Romney's investments -- dropping off toddlers at one of his Bright Horizon daycare centers, celebrating a Little League victory over his Domino's pizza or taking a shopping break in a Brookstone vibrating massage chair. While some Bain Capital deals have ended in plant closings and layoffs, Romney has embraced the family-friendly version on the campaign trail."

Bain's Russian business wasn’t about family-friendly products. Those deals were about cigarettes. And that work sent Bain into the shadows of the post-Soviet economy -– including helping to orchestrate anonymous, convoluted cash transactions to keep major deals hidden from regulators and competitors. It was part of a free-for-all that involved wholesale looting of major industries, as Western technocrats helped facilitate the transfer of Russia's wealth into the hands of a few oligarchs. That set in motion a populist backlash that helped sweep Vladimir Putin into power, giving the Kremlin dominance over a country Romney has lately called our "number one geopolitical enemy."

Bain was in the middle of all of this, putting to work the same skills it had sharpened in the U.S. -- using taxpayer money to help it gain footholds in Russia. In March 1993, the American government gave Bain & Co. a $3.9 million contract to advise Boris Yeltsin's administration on the privatization of the Russian economy, according records detailing the arrangement uncovered by The Huffington Post. Romney's consultants helped foreign firms and aspiring oligarchs decide how to corral Russia's riches -- including writing an official manual that outlined how best to navigate the process. At the same time, Bain leveraged its contacts with senior Russian officials to arrange sweetheart deals for its tobacco clients."