Money cleanses: former BAM head remembers how billionaire donor Prokhorov "had successfully engineered" financial transactions

A 12/22/21 Inside Philanthropy post from Karen Brooks Hopkins, the president emerita of Brooklyn Academy of Music, was headlined A Winter’s Tale: A Fundraiser Recalls an Exceptionally Chilly Reception from a Potential Donor and concerns a trip to Siberia.

(This is apparently a fifth annual holiday post, and it's taken from her recent memoir, BAM…and Then It Hit Me.)

She writes:

Bruce Ratner, our former chairman, during his long battle to get the Barclays Center built on a large parcel of land very near to BAM, needed additional investment dollars, and somehow, this journey ended up taking him all the way to Moscow and Siberia, via the participation of Russian billionaire—and enormous basketball fan—Mikhail Prokhorov. Of course, when I learned that a billionaire was “moving in” next door to BAM, I made it a personal quest to get him involved.

It turned out that his sister, Irina Prokhorova, was not only an accomplished publisher, but she was also running his foundation and wielded approval over all of his philanthropic giving. Mikhail was a famous bachelor who had made his fortune in Siberian nickel mines. There were financial transactions he was involved in related to this business that he had successfully engineered, resulting in his massive wealth and inclusion in the group of Russian billionaires informally known worldwide as “the oligarchs.” Because of the origin of his fortune, his philanthropic foundation was incorporated in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. I, therefore, proposed an exchange project to Irina, and that was how Transcultural Express was launched.

(Emphases added)

Was Prokhorov really a hoops fan, given his limited presence at Nets games? (Maybe more than Bruce Ratner, less than Joe Tsai.)

Note that "had successfully engineered" translates essentially to what Matt Taibbi described as as an inside deal: "The auctions, at least by American standards, were shamelessly, transparently, hilariously rigged."

This is a reminder, as I've written, that "money cleanses"--and the source of a fortune, especially when dispensed under the guise of charity, is obscured. 

Consider the Wall Street Journal's coverage at the time, which called him "a successful businessman in his home country," or the New York Times coverage, which simply called him "the Russian businessman Mikhail Prokhorov, who is the owner of the Brooklyn Nets."

Challenge overcome

Brooks Hopkins describes a challenge in working with Prokhorova, who had "a suspicious nature and a rather cold demeanor." She writes:

Since the project was complicated, it required a disproportionately large amount of staff time for what turned out to be a decent and generous, but not transformative, amount of money.  I insisted that we allocate a percentage of the grant to cover administrative costs, a common practice in fundraising. Irina was adamantly opposed to any administrative or management costs coming out of her grant and our discussions became more heated as time passed.

Indeed, it was supposed to be $1 million over three years.

Brooks Hopkins goes on to describe a trip to Siberia, a decision for both sides to split costs, which, given that the "process of working with them was so exhausting and bureaucratic," she finally agreed.

But things "began to thaw ever so slightly" in Siberia, "I think the lack of pretension in Krasnoyarsk and the massive gratitude of the local population for the foundation’s generosity to their city really cheered her up," given the appearance of an American hip-hop dance troupe, she wrote. They all helped each other.