Special counsel and former FBI chief Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election resulted in charges this week against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and former campaign official Richard Gates. The charges stem from work that Gates and Manafort did on behalf of Russian politicians and oligarchs prior to joining the Trump campaign. One name that continually surfaces in news coverage about the charges is Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate and self-made billionaire with ties to the Kremlin whom Manafort allegedly offered to supply briefings on the election. Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Philip Nichols and Mitchell Orenstein, chair of Russian and East European studies at Penn, recently joined the Knowledge at Wharton show on SiriusXM channel 111 to discuss the connections between oligarchs like Deripaska, Moscow and Washington, D.C.
The Knowledge at Wharton SiriusXM show airs Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. EST, on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111.