"A 22,000-word magazine feature that an anonymous gadfly had mailed in manila envelopes to several senior faculty members showed how Shleifer had exploited the job and the inside information that came with it to turn himself into a mid-level oligarch while the country literally starved."
"By 1992, he was running a whole Moscow-based Harvard-sponsored economic Seal Team Six backed by tens of millions of dollars in congressionally appropriated USAID funding intended to help transform Russia into a sophisticated, well-oiled market economy. By 1994, Shleifer and wife, who worked for hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer, had partnered with then-unknown financier named Len Blavatnik to invest in Gazprom."
Larry Summers's 2005 resignation from Harvard followed a 22,000-word magazine feature detailing how his close friend and protégé Andrei Shleifer exploited a Harvard-sponsored World Bank privatization program in Russia. Shleifer, sent to oversee the rapid privatization of 225,000 state-owned enterprises, used his position and inside information to become a mid-level oligarch. By 1992, Shleifer directed a Moscow-based Harvard operation funded by tens of millions in USAID money. He and his wife partnered with financier Len Blavatnik to invest in Gazprom and other former Soviet assets while directly overseeing privatization efforts. The scandal revealed how Summers's institutional protection of his protégé ultimately precipitated his own departure, overshadowing the earlier controversy over his comments about women's aptitude in mathematics and science.
#harvard-scandal #russian-privatization #corruption-and-oligarchy #institutional-accountability #economic-reform-failure
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