"I spent 10 years there, so i do know the style issues work," observed Taurasi, who has performed for Russian groups and is the main scorer in W.N.B.A. historical past. "It's gentle."
UMMC Yekaterinburg paid Taurasi a pronounced $1.5 million to skip the 2015 W.N.B.A. season and play handiest in Russia.
"It was a very own alternative," Taurasi informed The long island times at the time. "My agent referred to it will be financially irresponsible now not to do it."
UMMC Yekaterinburg, primarily based in the city of the equal identify and roughly a two-hour flight from Moscow, is controlled through the oligarch Iskander Makhmudov and his business partner, Andrei Kozitsyn. Makhmudov and Kozitsyn head Ural Mining and Metallurgical company, which mines commodities like copper, zinc, coal, gold and silver, and is one of Russia's exact produc ers.
They were part of a wave of oligarchs who gathered their wealth after the collapse of the Soviet Union via investing in industries like gas, oil and precious metals. Following Putin's ascent, oligarchs like Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Prokhorov purchased into trendy activities franchises, like the soccer groups Chelsea and Arsenal F.C. and the N.B.A.'s Nets.
whereas some homeowners had legitimate reasons for investing in sports, others who funded or purchased teams had been doing so at least partially to appear more respectable to American and British authorities, in line with Karen Greenaway, a retired F.B.I. agent who investigated overseas corruption and spent a part of her profession within the former Soviet Union. Makhmudov has been linked to criminal activity and has business associations with other oligarchs tied to organized crime in Russia, in response to civil fits lodged in the u nited states and the UK through rivals and law enforcement officers.
Makhmudov turned into accused of being worried in a scheme to take over the Russian aluminum industry, based on a civil case filed in big apple in 2000. In it, Makhmudov and two other oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska and Michael Cherney, were accused of a racketeering scheme which worried fraud, bribery and attempted homicide. They contested the allegations, and the case become disregarded within the u.s. since the decide consented to move it to Russia.
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