Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sent a letter of support for Oleg Deripaska’s efforts to obtain a multiple-entry U.S. visa after the billionaire was denied direct access to the world’s largest economy.
The “persistent state of limbo” of Deripaska’s legal status in the U.S. “has become an impediment to the promotion of mutually advantageous contacts between the business communities of the two countries,” Lavrov said in a letter to the Endeavor Group, the lobbying firm Deripaska hired to help with his visa, according to according to a regulatory filing on the U.S. Department of Justice’s website.
Deripaska’s Basic Element holding company, the main shareholder of aluminum producer United Co. Rusal, paid Endeavor Group $212,694.10 in the six months through May 2009 to help with his visa application, according to the filing.
Sergey Babichenko, a spokesman for Basic Element, declined to comment on Deripaska’s visa status in the U.S., saying by phone today only that the company purchased some consulting services from Endeavor. The Vedomosti newspaper cited an unidentified representative for Deripaska as saying the billionaire doesn’t plan to visit America anytime soon.
The U.S. revoked the visa without explanation in 2006, according to an August 2007 filing by Magna International Corp., the Canadian auto-parts maker that Deripaska owned a stake in at the time. The Wall Street Journal last year cited unidentified people as saying that the visa problem was connected to allegations that Deripaska had links to organized crime, which the businessman has repeatedly denied.
“The Russian side has raised this issue with various U.S. officials on numerous occasions, including in the course of bilateral discussions with both the White House and the State Department” without success, Lavrov said in the letter.
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