Author Archives: sterlingcooper

THE MET GALA…WE ALL ASPIRE TO BE ATTENDEES?, WHAT A PARTY!

The Met Gala Is Entering Its Billionaire Era With Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez

The Met Gala draws criticism as Jeff Bezos and Silicon Valley firms take a larger role in funding and shaping the iconic event.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, are pictured at the 2024 Met Gala. Photo by Kevin Mazur/MG24/Getty Images for The Met Museum

The official co-chairs of Monday’s Met Gala include Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and, of course, Anna Wintour. Yet the star-studded lineup has been overshadowed by the event’s “honorary chairs,” a largely ceremonial title that has drawn outsized attention this year. Instead of designers, actors, musicians or athletes, the roles have gone to billionaires Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

This isn’t the first time members of the tech elite have appeared at the Met Gala—Bezos himself attended in 2012, 2019 and 2024. But the prominence of his involvement this year has sparked a wave of criticism, shining a light on Silicon Valley’s increasingly influential role in fashion’s biggest night.

A growing relationship between the Met Gala and tech executives is “a new phenomenon in terms of the broader history of the gala, which was really about fashion,” Deirdre Clemente, a fashion historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Observer.

Founded in 1948 by publicist Eleanor Lambert, the Met Gala began as a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, attended primarily by New York City socialites. It was a far cry from today’s global spectacle. The shift toward celebrity accelerated in the 1970s under former Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland, and by the time Wintour took over as chair in 1995, the event was well on its way to becoming a cultural juggernaut. (Wintour recently stepped down as editor-in-chief of Vogue U.S. but remains its global editorial director.)

As the Met Gala’s profile has risen, so has its price of entry. Tickets—available only to guests approved by Wintour—cost $100,000, while tables start at $350,000. As tech companies have amassed enormous wealth, they’ve increasingly stepped in to foot the bill in exchange for cultural cachet. This year’s table buyers reportedly include Amazon, OpenAI, Meta and Snap.

“I’m calling it the ‘Tech Gala,’ because so much tech has gotten involved over the last decade,” Amy Odell, the author of the 2022 Wintour biography Anna, told Observer. “Over the years, the price of admission has become so high that it’s just like, who else can afford it?”

Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Sánchez Bezos are also serving as the lead sponsors for this year’s event. But it was the announcement of their roles as honorary chairs in February that ignited backlash. Despite Wintour defending Sánchez Bezos as a “wonderful asset to the museum and the event” in a recent CNN interview, criticism has continued to mount. An anti-billionaire activist group known as “Everyone Hates Elon,” has even plastered New York City with posters calling for a boycott.

Man puts up red poster reading 'Boycott the Bezos Met Gala.' — Posters condemning the involvement of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos in the Met Gala have popped up across New York City. Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

For some observers, however, the presence of ultra-wealthy figures represents less a departure than a return to the gala’s fundraising roots. “If you’re talking about raising money, you invite the people who have the most money,” Adrienne Jones, a fashion professor at the Pratt Institute, told Observer. “Who else to invite to be an honorary chair but one of the wealthiest men on the planet?”

Silicon Valley’s growing presence at the Met Gala has been building for years. Amazon sponsored the event in 2012, followed by Apple in 2016. TikTok backed the gala in 2022, the same year OpenAI created an A.I. installation for the Costume Institute’s accompanying exhibition. Attendees have included not only Bezos but also Elon Musk, Tim Cook and Sergey Brin.

In 2022, Wintour even invited Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder later convicted of fraud, to attend and potentially sponsor the event. He ultimately canceled at the last minute, reportedly frustrating Wintour’s team, according to Michael Lewis’ 2023 book Going Infinite.

Despite occasional controversy, tech companies remain eager to participate. A six-figure fee “is a drop in the bucket to them,” said Odell. “What they get in exchange is so much more valuable, which is to be seen as glamorous and cool and to get that kind of exposure to a largely female audience.”

This year’s backlash, however, signals a shift in public sentiment. Critics are responding not just to tech’s presence but to Bezos and Sánchez Bezos being “front and center this time,” Jones said, pointing as well to growing concerns about wealth inequality and the labor impacts of A.I.

Whether that backlash will alter the Met Gala’s reliance on Silicon Valley remains uncertain. “They opened the door for Silicon Valley to now be a part of this—and the money they’re bringing with it,” said Jones.

$800,000,000 YES $800 MILLION PAID BY THE LARGEST SETTLEMENT FOR ABUSE BY NEW YORK ARCHDIOCESE…IS THIS REALLY A RELIGION OF GOOD WORKS AND EXAMPLE OF JESUS?

Archdiocese of New York Agrees To Pay $800,000,000 in Sex Abuse Settlement WHY ARE THESE ABUSERS in the funny hats SMILING?

Two years after the Archdiocese of Los Angeles reached an $880 million settlement with men and women who survived childhood sexual abuse at the hands of Roman Catholic priests and clergy in their diocese, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York is following suit, agreeing to pay more than $800 million to its own sexual abuse survivors.

So far, the Catholic Church has paid out more than $5 billion in settlements, which has bankrupted at least 19 dioceses.

The archdiocese has been planning this for a while. Along with selling off buildings and laying off staff, including the sale of their New York headquarters for $100 million, the Archdiocese is suing its insurance company, Chubb.

The archdiocese claims that “even though we have paid them over $2 billion in premiums by today’s standards, [Chubb] is now attempting to evade their legal and moral contractual obligation to settle covered claims which would bring peace and healing to victim-survivors.”

Chubb insists that it is not obligated to settle several of these claims, some of which go back over 80 years, because the church knew about the abuse and did nothing to stop it, making the incidents ineligible for coverage.

A letter sent by the Archbishop of New York, Ronald Hicks, notes that the matter has been a painful process, but they hope that all parties accept. If so, they would each received around $215,000. It reads in part:

As you may have heard, the Archdiocese of New York and the Plaintiff’s Liaison Committee (PLC), which represents a majority of victim-survivors, have been working hard for several months to reach agreement on a global settlement of all sex abuse lawsuits. The parties have been working to create the framework of a comprehensive arrangement that will deliver compensation to victim-survivors faster and more efficiently than the traditional legal process. These discussions have been facilitated by Judge Daniel J. Buckley, a highly experienced neutral third-party mediator. Although much work remains to be done before a settlement can be finalized and consummated, I am cautiously optimistic about the path we are on.

Members of the PLC, attorneys who have long advocated for victim-survivors, have begun reaching out to counsel for all impacted individuals and it is our sincere hope to achieve full participation; we cannot begin to compensate victims until full participation is achieved. If a truly global settlement can be achieved, compensation will become available to victim survivors in the fastest, most comprehensive manner possible, without the need for lengthy painful litigation for victim-survivors or bankruptcy proceedings for the Archdiocese. Though I am new to the Archdiocese of New York, I recognize the immense effort that this Archdiocese has dedicated to supporting victim-survivors over the past decade. My predecessor, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, established the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program (IRCP) in 2016 which provided millions in compensation to victim-survivors. The Archdiocese has sold off the majority of its real estate holdings and made significant cuts to our staff and other operational expenses. These cuts have been painful for us, but they were necessary measures to secure the resources needed to compensate victim-survivors.

It cannot be denied that this has been a painful process – most significantly so for the victim-survivors and their families and loved ones who have suffered, in most cases, for decades. I pray that all of us, as the Family of God, will come together to support and affirm these individuals and take these next steps to bring about some healing and peace.

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER IS JUST ANOTHER SCAM!

Fake Perils Make Real Money

You didn’t need a legal case to know that the Southern Poverty Law Center, to stay alive, badly needs the perils it claims to deplore. The federal indictment, which charges the nonprofit with wire fraud, false statements and conspiracy to conceal money laundering, alleges that the Montgomery, Ala.-based group paid hefty sums to “informants” supposedly operating inside extremist groups. Millions of dollars allegedly went to these “field sources”—Klan members, neo-Nazis—even as the SPLC labeled the same organizations dangerous extremists on its website.

One of the indictment’s claims, if borne out, so perfectly captures the cynicism of radical politics in the 2020s that you’d call it far-fetched if you read it in a novel by Christopher Buckley. The indictment alleges that one source “was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC.” This person, say prosecutors, “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.” Between 2015 and 2023, the nonprofit paid this informant $270,000.

The SPLC’s lack of compunction amazes, but its intrigues flow from the nature of the activist nonprofit enterprise. Like almost all advocacy organizations, the SPLC faces the temptation to exaggerate the urgency of its mission and the extent of its accomplishments. Donors respond to big claims and menacing specters. Hence the SPLC’s desperate effort to defame people and organizations on the political right—Charles Murray, Prager University—as promoters of ” hate” and “extremism.” The war for America’s soul may go well or poorly, but the money’s got to keep flowing.

Which is why that Unite the Right rally was the best thing ever to happen to the SPLC. A gathering of, at most, 500 young nincompoops high on racist humbug metamorphosed, in the minds of anxious Americans—and with the media’s help—into a mass movement of brownshirts ready to seize the country’s institutions and overthrow its government. Donations to the nonprofit ballooned in the year after the rally.

The SPLC didn’t create the Charlottesville rally, though its machinations probably helped at the margins. The import of the episode, though, lies in the fact that the nonprofit’s leaders plainly felt it had an interest in making the threat of white racial bigotry appear to hold more sway over American life than it does. “Interest” in the crassest, monetary sense.

The modern liberal outlook, to borrow the political philosopher Kenneth Minogue’s metaphor, must have dragons to slay. When the dragons diminish in size or die out altogether, the civic-minded liberal naturally wants to invent bigger ones, if only to have things to worry about. As with every such mental pathology, this one offers financial rewards to determined exploiters.

The late Jesse Jackson based a lucrative career on the fiction that America in the 1980s and ’90s still excluded black Americans from opportunity in the way the South had under Jim Crow. The static

history of racist America he helped to propagate allowed Jackson, in the 2000s and 2010s, to threaten large companies with boycotts on the grounds that they hadn’t done enough to mitigate racism. His attacks would conveniently cease when the companies agreed to donate to Jackson’s political operation.

Al Sharpton followed the same path. Only Mr. Sharpton, unapologetic perpetrator of the 1987 Tawana Brawley hoax, spun the perception of perennial racism into a decadeslong media career. Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo and other “antiracist” theorizers attained celebrity status by persuading millions of well-meaning people to fear and loathe nonexistent monsters.

The District of Columbia teems with nonprofits dedicated to the proposition that one thing or another menaces the citizenry. Human Rights Campaign, to take one example, regularly informs its followers and donors that gay, “trans” and “gender-expansive” Americans suffer from routine violence and bigotry at the hands of their countrymen. In 2025, HRC brought in $46 million in contributions.

Climate catastrophism has grown into a global grift, with poor countries demanding billions in “reparations” from nations with functioning markets, but consider climate alarmism’s role in American politics. For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency and related government bodies have doled out grants to climate- related nonprofits that return the favor by churning out apocalyptic reports about an always-imminent climate crisis. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act supersized that effort. In 2023, the Biden administration came up with what it called the American Climate Corps, to “mobilize the next generation of clean energy, conservation and resilience workers”: that is, to send millions of public dollars sluicing through climate nonprofits around the country.

To its credit, the Trump administration canceled the program, but similar funding streams proliferate across federal and state agencies. A cynical observer might feel inclined to use the word “racket”: Environmental agencies fund activist groups, which make apocalyptic claims more credible, thus enabling the agencies to demand more funding and regulatory authority from government budgetwriters. Now that’s what I call sustainability.

MEET THE LOCAL CELEBRITIES TWO OF THE HARDEST WORKING DOGS AT THE AIRPORT…WHO NEEDS PEOPLE!?

The hardest-working staff at the airport? These two good boys.

Border collies Hercules and Ned help protect planes and passengers from bird strikes. We spent a day with the local celebrities at work.

Yesterday at 5:00 a.m. EDT

Ned, left, and Hercules take a break from work at the West Virginia International Yeager Airport, where they patrol and clear wildlife on the airport runways. (Rich-Joseph Facun for The Washington Post)

Five days a week, and sometimes weekends, the herding dogs punch the clock and go to work clearing birds and woodland creatures from the mountaintop airfield at CRW. Their job as “wildlife canines” is critical to protecting planes and passengers from potentially dangerous wildlife strikes.

Collisions with local fauna is a real and rising threat. Between 1990 and 2024, the Federal Aviation Administration received reports of 313,716 strikes, including 25 accidents that caused 52 human deaths. In 2024, the agency registered 22,372 collisions, a 14 percent increase from the previous year.

Since the dogs joined CRW’s wildlife management team — Hercules in 2018 and Ned in 2024 — Keyser said bird strikes have declined by more than 70 percent. As of January, according to the FAA Wildlife Strike Database, the airport has submitted only one incident to the agency, a brush with a common grackle.

A portrait of Hercules, along with his various work gear (blue pilot’s cap, goggles) and honorary patches. (Rich-Joseph Facun for The Washington Post)

“Border collies are so intelligent and can endure the heat and cold really well,” said Keyser, who owns seven dogs. “They are full of energy and they like doing their job, because they’re herding dogs. It’s born in them.”

The 9-year-old Hercules owes his livelihood to Piper, the border collie who chased 9,347 birds over 6,206 hours at Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City, Michigan. Piper died of cancer in 2018.

CRW airport authorities, inspired by Piper’s accomplishments, decided to recruit a border collie of their own. After graduating from Flyaway Geese, a North Carolina dog-training facility, Hercules moved to the Charleston airport. When he was 7 years old and starting to slow down, Keyser drove back to North Carolina and returned with Ned, a tireless go-getter with a shiny black coat and pointy bat ears.

“Herc is a working dog and loving dog,” Keyser said. “And Ned is all about work, but he likes to play ball, too.”

Since introducing Hercules and later Ned, 4, on social media, the pups have gained celebrity status with about 72,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok. Passengers and flight crew members passing through Charleston often request a cuddle session with the pups. The dogs even have their own apparel line as well as souvenir swag sold at the airport gift shop.

I count myself a fan and was delighted when Keyser invited me to accompany the pups on a daily patrol earlier this month. Unlike many working dogs at airports, petting Hercules and Ned is allowed. The wildlife team, in fact, encourages it.

Preparing the dogs for duty

Hercules, left, and Ned prepare for another shift of work with wildlife specialist Chris Keyser. (Rich-Joseph Facun for The Washington Post)

6:49 a.m. Keyser arrives in the pre-security departures hall a few minutes after the first plane of the day, a Chicago-bound United flight, has lifted off. He dashes outside to grab a biscuit from a friend who asks if, in return, he can say hello to the dogs.

Unfortunately, Hercules and Ned have not clocked in yet.

7:04 a.m. In a back office inside the Airport Response Coordination Center, a creature stirs.

“I can see a little nose,” says Keyser, peering through a crack in the blinds covering the door to their den.

Hercules and Ned live at the airport full-time, in an all-white room furnished with dog beds and kennels, hooks for their leashes, harnesses, pilot hats and coats, and a shrine to them. Portraits by admirers adorn the walls, and a display case contains military patches that soldiers traded in exchange for a Wildlife Patrol CRW badge embossed with a cartoon image of the pups.

After a breakfast of kibble and fish oil, Keyser says the magic words: “Are you ready to run some birds?”

First runs of the day

Keyser patrols the airport in his SUV, with Ned and Hercules in tow. (Rich-Joseph Facun for The Washington Post)

7:30 a.m. Hercules and Ned jump into the back seat of a white SUV emblazoned with a logo of the goggled dogs — the same graphic that appears on the back of Keyser’s hoodie and the patches as well as the magnets and mugs sold in the airport gift shop. (Some of the products predate Ned and feature only Hercules.)

Inside the vehicle, the air conditioning blasting on a crisp April morning, Keyser describes the four seasons through the lens of a border collie.

In the spring, when migratory birds are flying north, the dogs can disperse flocks of up to 200 crows, rafters of turkeys and nimbus clouds of starlings, one of the most dangerous hazards for planes. If starlings make contact with an aircraft, Keyser said it is like “getting hit with a shotgun.” April rains turn the grassy airfield into an all-you-can-eat buffet for birds.

“If we make it unpleasant, they won’t want to come here to eat,” he said.

Ned, left, and Hercules wait for another flock of birds or other wildlife to chase. (Rich-Joseph Facun for The Washington Post)

Summer slows down, as birds seek shade from the heat. Fall picks up with birds of prey, such as barn and screech owls and red-tail hawks. On gusty days, upward of 50 turkey vultures can surf the wind currents overhead. Anytime of the year, the dogs might come across a whitetail deer, coyote or turtle, which can derail a taxiing plane.

7:45 a.m. Before driving onto the airfield, Keyser calls the air-traffic control tower to check in. Ned, upon hearing a voice crackle over the radio, joins the conversation, whining and barking.

Keyser runs the dogs on all four taxiways, plus the perimeter and the one runway, totaling five or six miles a day. Though the 767-acre airport is small — it served 423,000 passengers last year, nearly 106 million fewer than Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport — it can be busy.

In addition to three major airlines and one budget carrier, CRW serves the West Virginia Air National Guard’s 130th Airlift Wing; private jets, military and cargo planes from the Capital Jet Center; and Marshall University’s flight school.

7:50 a.m. On their first lap, the dogs speed by a parking lot of C-130 Hercules aircraft, the namesake of the elder border collie. (Keyser had tried to rename Ned, but the young pup ignored any commands directed at “Charlie.”)

Hercules, left, and Ned wait for a command at CRW as Keyser checks the perimeter of the property. (Rich-Joseph Facun for The Washington Post)

“Shake ’em out. Flush ’em out. Get the stubborn ones,” Keyser shouted at the blur of fur. “Look, look, look. Look, look, look. Shh, shh, shh.”

“Good job!” Keyser shouts, their reward for being such good dogs.

CRAZY APARTMENT PRICES IN MONACO, CAN IT BE DIRTY MONEY? SAY IT IS NOT SO!

Three Bedrooms for €60 Million Shows Monaco’s Dirty Money Headache

A leaked trove of emails regarding the world’s priciest real estate offers a window into how the principality grapples with money laundering.

The Mareterra development in Monaco features 114 waterfront homes that initially sold for €16 million to almost €500 million, making it one of the most expensive and exclusive addresses on the planet.
Monaco has been added to the “grey list” for being deemed insufficiently vigilant about dirty money, and has since strengthened regulation and set up a financial intelligence and anti-money-laundering watchdog.
The principality’s new laws and greater oversight, including a tightening of know-your-customer rules, have led to penalties for firms that fail to flag suspicious activities, and may be diminishing Monaco’s appeal for some wealthy individuals.

Standing on the windswept balcony of the expansive apartment in Monaco’s Mareterra development feels a little like being on a superyacht heading out to sea. The unobstructed view of the Mediterranean stretches to the horizon, the pale ash floors evoke a ship’s deck, and fresh breezes keep things cool even on the hottest summer days.

The other thing the flat shares with a floating luxury palace: its price. Listed at more than €60 million ($70 million), the three-bedroom home costs more than many billionaires might spend on a sumptuous schooner or cruiser.

Those prices haven’t stopped the world’s ultrawealthy from snapping up Mareterra properties since they were first listed while still under construction in 2017. The 114 waterfront homes initially sold for €16 million to almost €500 million, and they would now likely cost even more. That makes Mareterra one of the most expensive and exclusive addresses on the planet, with views of the winding Grand Prix circuit, just a 10-minute walk from the storied casino and a few minutes farther from the yacht harbor.

The problem is, some prospective buyers of those properties have trouble establishing they’re the kind of residents the principality wants. For more than a century, Monaco has attracted tycoons, movie stars and sports legends—not to mention some less-savory types whose fortunes can’t always be traced to legitimate sources. A century ago, Somerset Maugham purportedly dubbed the area “a sunny place for shady people.” But Monaco, under increasing pressure to crack down on financial misdeeds, says those buyers are no longer welcome.

Those concerns came to a head in June 2024, just six months before Mareterra’s inauguration, when the country of 39,000 residents was added to the “grey list,” a roster of jurisdictions such as Syria, Venezuela and Yemen deemed insufficiently vigilant about dirty money.

The designation by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, a global watchdog created by the Group of Seven in 1989, sent Monaco into panic mode. As concern about being added to the list grew, the reigning monarch, Prince Albert II, shook up the Finance Ministry and strengthened regulation. The hit to Monaco’s image was “a wake-up call,” says Pierre-André Chiappori, who served as finance minister from March 2024 until last month. “We were maybe not alert enough in the past.”

Four areas were singled out as potential fronts for money laundering: real estate, yachting, sporting agents and private banks. The principality has started clamping down on companies that fail to flag suspicious activities, and it has set up the Autorité Monégasque de Sécurité Financière, a financial intelligence and anti-money-laundering watchdog. There are signs, though, that the actions are diminishing Monaco’s appeal for some people wealthy enough to afford the eye-popping prices at Mareterra, built on nearly 15 acres reclaimed from the sea.

The fresh laws and greater oversight include a tightening of so-called know-your-customer rules, which require businesses to understand where their clients’ money comes from and alert authorities about any suspicions. In the past year the regulator has penalized six firms for deficiencies, including two real estate agencies deemed to have insufficiently vetted buyers, including one that handled a Mareterra transaction.

As Monaco works to shake the grey-list designation, it’s instructive to look at the real estate sector, the heart of Monaco’s economy.

The principality’s property records as well as a stash of emails and preliminary deeds from Mareterra offer a snapshot of early sales and the vast sums at play. Bloomberg Businessweek reviewed documents from Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit that preserves hacked and leaked materials believed to be in the public interest. While there’s no suggestion that the developer or any individuals named in the materials were involved in any wrongdoing, the documents provide insight into the inner workings of the highest end of the property market, its broad geographic reach and Monaco’s concerns about money laundering.

The information included hundreds of messages between developer L’Anse du Portier, a local notary, bankers and several dozen prospective buyers or their representatives. They date from 2017, when construction of the seabed infrastructure was still underway, through mid-2022, more than two years before people began to move in. Interested parties included storied names such as UK chemicals billionaire Jim Ratcliffe; Formula One star Max Verstappen (he wanted six bedrooms and 14 parking spots); and Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, who shelled out €471 million—almost certainly the priciest flat ever sold—for five full floors in an 18-story ceramic-and-glass structure (called “Le Renzo,” for its designer, starchitect Renzo Piano) that appears to float over the neighborhood.

Buyers had to be approved by Patrice Pastor, the head of Monaco’s most powerful property dynasty and the man who spearheaded the development. A L’Anse du Portier executive told the French daily Nice-Matin in 2022 that Mareterra required personal interviews with prospective buyers, and not just their legal representatives, with the aim of getting “the best people for the neighborhood.” That restriction, the executive said, would effectively rule out “clients from the Middle East, Asia and most Russians,” who tend to be less interested in dealing with such details on their own.

Yet among the first transactions in the cache of emails were deals by individuals with links to Russia that added up to more than €1 billion. Little-known aviation executives Konstantin Krivchenko and Dmitry Kuptsov—Russian-born, but with Irish passports—wanted to acquire four villas at €100 million each through specially created companies that Monaco authorities approved over Christmas 2017. Later emails indicate the pair missed payments on some properties, and they ultimately downsized to a single 2,300-square-meter (25,000-square-foot) villa with hammam, sauna, cinema, and massage and wine-tasting rooms. A representative for the men declined to comment.

In 2018, Valeriy Votinov, the then-21-year-old son of a former executive at oil giant Rosneft, offered more than €500 million for nine properties—among a flurry of transactions in the principality he was involved in around that time. In an email, Pastor described the largest of the prospective deals at Mareterra as “an important step” for the development. At the time his father, Andrey, was fighting extradition from the UK to Russia on charges of embezzlement (Russia’s request was turned down as British courts said the defendant might not get a fair trial).

Three years later, emails show the younger Votinov agreed to pay an additional €135 million for a five-story villa called Dream Catcher, with indoor and outdoor pools, a 10-car garage, and a disco in the basement. Yet when he left Rosneft in 2014 after two decades there, Andrey Votinov held a stake that would have been worth only about $1 million, according to company filings.

As Votinov tried to resell three of his flats after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the proposed buyer’s bank asked questions. A lawyer for Votinov wrote back: “Given the current context, it may be useful to point out that this shareholder is a Cypriot national and does not have Russian nationality.” Neither Votinov responded to requests for comment.

Russian steel tycoon Victor Rashnikov and his daughter had planned before the war to purchase Mareterra properties worth tens of millions of euros involving a Cyprus company and a Geneva bank. Rashnikov subsequently faced sanctions, and his attorney says his sale never went through and that he owns no property in the principality.

The Monaco government declined to comment on any particular transactions but says that it applies all EU sanctions and that any significant real estate purchases are subject to review, particularly those in Mareterra. Guy-Thomas Levy-Soussan, a lead executive behind the development, says “the sale of properties in Mareterra adhered to the highest standards of compliance,” in particular when it comes to money laundering and international sanctions. He says L’Anse du Portier gathered information on prospective buyers—the origin of their wealth, whether they’re legal residents of the principality, and if they already owned property there—to guide its selection, and that many were turned down.

Even before Monaco landed on the grey list, authorities say they were trying to root out so-called letter-box residents—people benefiting from the country’s zero income tax rate who didn’t really live there for the required six months annually. Newcomers must open a bank account and find housing before getting a residence permit. Homes must be big enough to house everyone who’s said to be living there, and authorities sometimes monitor utility bills and credit card expenses as evidence. “Monaco is a lot less of a ghost town compared to 10 years ago,” says Florian Valeri, head of real estate brokerage Barnes Valeri Agency.

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The grey-list designation adds to growing concerns among some locals that Monaco has lost ground as an international wealth destination, though the war in the Persian Gulf may change those calculations. An annual index from Barnes’ global parent, conducted before the hostilities, showed Monaco dropping 10 spots this year to 14th among cities with the greatest appeal for the ultrarich. Property consultant Knight Frank says that while Monaco remains the planet’s priciest real estate market, Dubai led growth in high-end residential property purchases over the past five years. And citizenship adviser Henley & Partners’ 2026 list of leading destinations for millionaires is topped by the United Arab Emirates and includes Portugal, Greece, Italy and Switzerland—but not Monaco.

The slide risks cooling a property market that’s as hot as you’d expect in a country smaller than Central Park with the world’s highest per capita income. But the stronger rules for banking, starting businesses and applying for residence permits are also becoming impediments to investment. “It’s a real challenge to open a bank account in Monaco,” says Remi Delforge, a lawyer who advises foreigners moving to the principality.

One person working in the Monaco property sector says a wealthy person from the Middle East recently gave up trying to gain residency after being asked for bank statements dating back decades, including from institutions that no longer exist. Some banks are reluctant to take on any new Chinese and Russian clients, says the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private transactions.

Chiappori, the former finance minister, says Monaco has carried out a sweeping inventory of property companies and that further money-laundering-related sanctions are in the pipeline. While it’s uncertain how long it will take to get off the grey list, he says the tougher restrictions are permanent. And if that means some potential buyers decide against Mareterra or Monaco’s next hyper-expensive project, that’s OK. “We don’t need dirty money,” he says. “The cost of tarnishing our image would be much higher than the benefits of selling an expensive apartment.” —

NEW YORKERS NOW LEARN ALL ABOUT SOCIALISM, ALWAYS STEAL OTHER PEOPLES MONEY, NEVER USE THEIR OWN!

“Mamdani Mart” Exposes The Inefficiency Of Socialism In One Chart

Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z New Media published the most popular charts of the week on financial markets, but the most revealing one came at the end of the note: a comparison suggesting that New York City’s first grocery store, which will soon be run by unhinged socialists, will be structurally less efficient than private-sector supermarkets.

But who cares when it’s not taxpayer monies?

According to the New York Post, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed city-owned grocery store in East Harlem would require roughly $30 million in taxpayer funding.

At just 9,000 square feet, the project implies a construction cost of about $3,000 per square foot – an exceptionally and alarmingly high number by grocery industry standards.

From an economic standpoint, the “Mamdani Mart” underscores a familiar pattern: state-directed supermarkets often fail to achieve the cost discipline, operational efficiency, and scale seen in private-sector chains.

xperimented with socialism:

“There’s No Nothing”: Empty Shelves, Rotten Odors Plague Gov’t-Funded Supermarket In Missouri

The end result is Cuba.

When taxpayer-funded stores fail, socialists will never blame themselves but will merely say they didn’t experiment hard enough.

nd The Radicalization Of America’s Nonprofit Left

Socialism is inherently parasitic, abusing productive taxpayers to subsidize left-wing experiments. It always tend to fail. Let’s not forget CNBC’s Sara Eisen blasted the far-left mayor after he filmed a promotional video touting a proposed new tax on luxury properties.

COVID “VACCINES”AND MASKS WERE PURE BULLSHIT!

Fauci And CDC Proven Wrong As Massive Denmark Study Shows Masks And Vaccines Failed To Stop COVID

New research confirms 66% of Danish adults caught COVID despite extreme mandates

It wasn’t that long ago when health experts and government officials told us that we had proven, clear-cut tools to stop the spread of COVID. Force everyone to wear a mask, and get everybody vaccinated.

Anthony Fauci, in a White House briefing in early 2022, said, “We believe we can get there because we have the tools with vaccines, with boosts, with masks, with tests, and with antivirals.”

Rochelle Walensky, then head of the CDC, said something similar in 2021: “What I really want to emphasize in this moment is that we have the tools we need to address the Omicron variant. And those tools include what we have been saying…”You really do need to get vaccinated…you need to practice all of those prevention measures, including wearing a mask in public indoor settings.”

During a Senate hearing in 2022, she repeated that phrasing: “Our ability to manage this virus today is in large part due to the tools we have, vaccines, tests, treatments, and masks.”

There was, of course, no proof that masks or vaccine uptake would prevent COVID infection or transmission, and plenty of data demonstrating the opposite. But politicians and their public health advisors committed down the path of masks and vaccinations because backing down would mean admitting they were wrong.

But boy oh boy were they wrong, as research about the rapid spread of COVID indicated.

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 11: Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. The committee will hear testimony about the federal response to COVID-19 and new, emerging variants. (Photo by Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)

Research From Denmark Highlights How Pointless COVID Restrictions Were

Perhaps the simplest way to indicate how useless our COVID policies were at preventing viral spread is to examine how many people got COVID. There are many data points demonstrating this failure, in fact, they’ve been compiled into several books.

But one team of researchers accidentally disproved COVID mandates by turning their efforts to examining how widespread COVID infections had been in Denmark during a period of extremely restrictive policies attempting to stop the spread of the then-dominant Omicron variant.

This study looked at seroprevalence, essentially, how many people had COVID antibodies as a result of infection between November 2021 and March 2022. During this time period, Denmark had mask mandates, extraordinarily high vaccine uptake, and one of European government’s most favored policies, vaccine passports.

Sure enough, they estimate that a whopping 66% of healthy Danish adults got COVID in just over four months. Incredibly, roughly a third of infections were “not captured by SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR testing.”

Infections were transmitted extremely quickly, with “32% of the adult Danish population” infected in “just four weeks.” These infections occurred, they wrote, “despite high vaccination coverage in the Danish population.”

Importantly, the infection fatality rate of the Omicron variant was also extremely low. They estimated that, per seroprevalence data, it was roughly 6.2 per 100,000 infections, across all ages measured in the study. Unsurprisingly, rates varied wildly between age groups. The 30-day mortality rate broken down by age was as follows:

17-35 years: 1.6 per 100k
36-50 years: 4.1 per 100k
51-60 years: 7.6 per 100k
61-72: 15.1 per 100k

You can see why it was so important to force 17-year olds to wear masks and get COVID vaccines.

These are all important takeaways, but to put it in proper context, and drive home how useless our restrictions were against infection and transmission, we can look at how Denmark handled the Omicron wave, policy wise. As well as how some “experts” responded to their measures and compliance.

Denmark, during this time period, had mask mandates, vaccine passports, and exceptional compliance. And 66% of the healthy adult population got COVID in just four months.

Very odd that these proven “tools” would not have stopped COVID transmission, isn’t it?

When we say exceptional compliance, that’s not an exaggeration. Denmark got nearly 90% of their adult population vaccinated by August 2021. Cases then exploded a few months later, despite listening to Fauci and the CDC’s health advice.

Other “experts” at the time praised Denmark for their commitment to following science, such as former US Surgeon General Jerome Adams, Eric Topol, and Eric Feigl-Ding.

Topol said that Denmark showed how easy it was to “squash” the virus with masks and vaccine uptake. Same with Jerome Adams, who said their data showed that the “quickest way to end” surges was to “get your vax.” Both statements were obviously proven false, though neither acknowledged it or admitted it. When Denmark eventually relented on their policies after they’d conclusively failed, Eric Feigl-Ding criticized them heavily, saying “Danish political leaders have completely lost their frigging minds” by ending all “COVID-19 mitigations.” Cases plummeted immediately after they ended their mandates, because those “mitigations” did not work and, as this study demonstrates, a shocking majority of the population had already tested positive.

To sum up then, experts said that we had the tools to stop the Omicron variant: masks and COVID vaccines. Denmark tried those tools, achieved exemplary uptake, only for a study to later find that 66% of the adult population got COVID in a few months, with over 30% testing positive in a matter of weeks.

These policies didn’t work, the tools didn’t work, Omicron was far less dangerous than other variants anyway, and none of the experts who demanded these mitigations ever admitted any of it. A masterclass of misinformation, bad science, and gaslighting. The perfect COVID experience.

ELON MUSK HAS A WAY TO BANKRUPT AMERICA!!!! DO NOT DARE TAKE HIS ADVICE POLITICIANS!

Elon Musk Is Spectacularly Wrong About “Universal High Income”

Elon Musk is a man of extraordinary vision. He looked at the American space program, concluded that government bureaucracy had made it sclerotic and expensive, and built reusable rockets that changed the industry. He bet his own fortune on electric vehicles when the sector was a punchline and dragged it into commercial viability. He bought Twitter, renamed it X, and restored a platform that had become a censorship apparatus for progressive gatekeepers. On each of those fronts, Musk saw clearly what others refused to see.

Which is precisely why his latest proposal deserves a direct and honest answer: he is wrong. Not confused, not misguided in a forgivable way — wrong in a manner that conservatives, Christians, and anyone who has thought seriously about human nature should be able to identify immediately.

Late on a Thursday evening, Musk posted to his own platform that “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.” He added that inflation would not be a concern because “AI/robotics will produce goods and services far in excess of the increase in the money supply.”

As he famously once said, “Let that sink in.” The man who just spent months at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency, lecturing the country about the catastrophic dangers of federal spending and the moral bankruptcy of dependency culture, is now proposing that Washington mail high-income checks to every American citizen as a permanent response to artificial intelligence. The irony is so thick you could cut it with Occam’s razor.

But his track record of unmatched successes will have many believing him regardless of how ludicrous the concept. Like all successful people, Musk has failed at many things. But the one that sticks out may be the least consequential. When he was unveiling the Cybertruck, he had someone try to break the “unbreakable” glass. They did. Twice.

He had so much confidence that it wouldn’t break that he did it with the world watching. Now, he’s asking for even more faith in a plan in which he appears to have equal confidence. The difference is he lost nothing with the Cybertruck stunt other than a little pride. With Universal High Income, he risks causing a global economic collapse and the end of modern Western society.

The Economics Don’t Add Up — And Economists Are Saying So

Musk’s inflation argument rests on a claim that AI-generated abundance will outpace any increase in the money supply, making government checks essentially cost-free. It is a seductive theory, and it is not entirely without merit as a long-run projection. But Sanjeev Sanyal, who served as the principal economic adviser to India’s Ministry of Finance, rejected the premise without hesitation.

“He is so wrong on this,” Sanyal wrote on X. “AI will certainly cause dislocation, but like all technology it will also create new jobs and opportunities in the medium term. AI and robots will also not produce goods and services in excess of money or demand that there will be no inflation.”

Sanyal’s critique cuts to the root of a well-documented economic fallacy. The assumption that AI will produce a fixed, finite number of jobs while simultaneously eliminating others rests on what economists call the “lump of labor” fallacy — the idea that there is only so much work to go around. By that same logic, the industrial revolution should have left every displaced artisan destitute forever. History has repeatedly demonstrated that technological disruption creates new categories of employment, often in industries that were entirely unimaginable before the disruption occurred.

Pratyush Rai, co-founder and CEO of Merlin AI, made the point about inflation with blunt arithmetic. “The basic math on UHI doesn’t add up,” he wrote on X. “If everyone gets a high income check, everyone’s competing for the same houses, land, schools, lifestyle.”

He is correct. You cannot flood an economy with purchasing power without bidding up the price of everything that is finite — and land, housing, and human services are very finite indeed. AI can automate a software task. It cannot manufacture more coastline.

The Numbers Don’t Justify the Panic — Or the Prescription

In the first quarter of 2026, employers announced over 27,000 AI-linked job cuts — a 40% rise year over year, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas. That number is real and should not be dismissed. But it must be placed in context. The U.S. economy generates and destroys millions of jobs every quarter through normal market churn. Every major technological wave — from mechanized agriculture to the internet — produced displacement and then, with time and policy space to adapt, net employment growth.

The question is not whether AI disrupts; it is whether the correct response to disruption is to wire every American to a permanent government stipend or to build the conditions under which new industries, new trades, and new forms of value creation can emerge.

Musk’s own companies are among the most aggressive deployers of automation in the world. Tesla’s factories use more robots per square foot than almost any facility in manufacturing. SpaceX has relentlessly automated processes that once required large engineering teams. There is nothing wrong with that — it is innovation. But one might ask, with genuine curiosity, what exactly Musk believes will happen to the engineers, machinists, and logistics workers displaced by his own technology when their replacement income arrives via federal check. Will they spend the rest of their lives on the couch, optimized by abundance? Or will the human drive toward purpose, mastery, and contribution reassert itself — as it always has?

When the Left Agrees With You Immediately, Reconsider Your Position

Perhaps the most revealing moment in the entire episode came swiftly. Andrew Yang — the Democratic candidate who made Universal Basic Income the centerpiece of his 2020 presidential campaign and has been pushing the idea ever since — immediately embraced Musk’s proposal. “It’s clear that AI will wind up funding universal income,” Yang posted on X. “Let’s make that happen ASAP.”

When Andrew Yang is your most enthusiastic ally, something has gone wrong. Yang’s UBI vision was always about more than economics — it was about redefining the relationship between citizen and state, replacing the dignity of earned income with the managed comfort of government distribution.

Universal High Income goes further still. While UBI at least envisions citizens continuing to work while receiving support, UHI is openly predicated on a future in which work itself becomes unnecessary. That is not a conservative proposal. That is not even a liberal proposal in the classical sense. It is a utopian fantasy dressed in the language of technological inevitability — and utopian fantasies, as history has consistently demonstrated, tend to require totalitarian enforcement mechanisms before they are abandoned.

The Question Nobody Is Asking — But Should Be

The deepest problem with Musk’s proposal has nothing to do with inflation rates or fiscal projections. It has to do with the nature of man. Work is not merely an economic activity. It is, in the Judeo-Christian tradition that built Western civilization, a calling. When God placed Adam in the Garden, it was not to recline in passive abundance — it was to tend and keep it. The apostle Paul was not hedging when he wrote to the Thessalonians, “If any would not work, neither should he eat.” That is not a statement about poverty. It is a statement about dignity, purpose, and the ordering of human life toward something greater than consumption.

A culture in which meaningful work is replaced by government checks is not a culture at leisure — it is a culture in crisis. The social pathologies already associated with long-term unemployment — despair, addiction, family breakdown, community dissolution — do not disappear when the checks arrive. They accelerate. The problem was never the absence of money. The problem was the absence of purpose.

The Conservative Alternative Is Not Indifference

None of this is an argument for pretending that AI disruption is painless or that displaced workers should be abandoned. The conservative answer to technological displacement has always been grounded in the same principles that built the most prosperous economy in human history — free markets that create new industries faster than old ones die, an education and retraining infrastructure that prepares workers for emerging opportunities, and a safety net calibrated to transition rather than permanent dependency. The goal is not to make idleness comfortable. The goal is to make work possible.

Musk has done more than almost any private citizen alive to advance the productive capacity of the American economy. That record earns him enormous credibility on questions of innovation. It does not exempt him from scrutiny when he wanders into policy territory where the instincts of a tech optimist collide with the realities of governance, human nature, and fiscal sanity.

As Sanyal concluded, “Elon Musk’s universal high income will bankrupt any government that attempts it.” That is a verdict that should be taken seriously — not because Musk is malicious, but because well-intentioned proposals with catastrophic structural flaws have a way of becoming law.

The man who built rockets to escape Earth’s gravity should know better than anyone that some forces cannot simply be engineered away. Dependency is one of them.

OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY LOOKS LIKE A PRISON!!!

The Obama center sits on 19.3 acres in Chicago and contains a basketball court, two-level playground, recording studio and newly commissioned public art.

CHICAGO—Barack Obama’s new presidential center isn’t a cheap date, and neither is his adopted hometown.

When it opens June 19, it will set at least three modernera records for a former White House occupant: time taken to be completed, project cost and the price to get inside.

At $30, adult admission to see the 44th president’s story is more than at any other U.S. presidential library, a Wall Street Journal review shows. That is 59% higher than the average for presidents from John F. Kennedy through George W. Bush.

The top admission for the Obama Presidential Center is in keeping with the record expense of the project in a city known for complex and costly urban development, steep taxes and premium cultural attractions.

Chicago is certain to become a Democratic mecca for those eager to reconnect with their party’s most popular living former president. The center is expected to attract approximately 700,000 visitors annually and be an economic engine for the city, while also potentially helping transform the surrounding lower-income neighborhood.

The crowds and fundraising success (the Obama Foundation has disclosed donors of $1,001 or more) contrast with the struggles of the next Democratic president after Obama.

Former President Joe Biden has gotten off to a slow fundraising start for a center in Delaware, with some donors saying raising the necessary funds will be a heavy lift given how his presidency ended.

While the Obama project was initially estimated at $300 million, the final price tag hit about $850 million. The 19.3-acre campus includes a museum, foundation offices, a public library and recreational spaces.

Roughly $500 million was raised for the most recently built presidential shrine, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas.

Illinois residents, who helped underwrite some infrastructure costs, will get in free on Tuesdays and receive a $4 discount other days.

“Our campus is free and open to the public, with the exception of the four floors of the museum,” said Emily Bittner, a foundation spokeswoman. “We offer tremendous new amenities that no other presidential center provides, like an NBA-regulation-size basketball court, two-level playground, recording studio, classroom spaces and more than two dozen newly commissioned pieces of public art.”

Admission is in line with other major Chicago attractions. The Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, not far away on the city’s South Side, is $25.95 for an adult. The Adler Planetarium is $25, while the Art Institute of Chicago is $32.

The Obama center’s opening is roughly five years behind what was originally planned after preservationists and activists slowed construction in court. Pandemic-related disruptions also delayed work.

Presidential libraries opened in recent decades in about half the time as this one, Wall Street Journal calculations show. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library opened just more than 1,000 days after he left office. Bill Clinton’s took 1,398 days. The libraries of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush averaged 1,653 days. Obama’s is set for 3,437 days.

Obama’s center won’t technically be a library. Instead, his foundation is paying $5 million to support digitizing millions of pages of unclassified records for online use. It will be run by the foundation rather than the National Archives and Records Administration, the federal agency that traditionally operates the libraries and museums.

FORECLOSURES SURGE NATIONALLY…NEW HOUSING CRISIS?

Foreclosure surge sweeps America: 118,000 homes at risk as families buckle under financial strain

A fresh wave of foreclosures is sweeping across the United States, with more than 118,000 homes caught up in the crisis in just the first three months of 2026.

It is a grim omen – with echoes of the run up to the 2008 Great Recession – that financial pressure is mounting for thousands of families.

New Attom data shows 118,727 properties were hit with a foreclosure filing in the first quarter – up 26 percent on the same period last year.

The figures also show a steady rise from the end of 2025, suggesting the problem is accelerating rather than easing.

Behind the numbers are homeowners increasingly struggling to keep up with mortgage payments as the cost of living remains stubbornly high.

Even more alarming is the surge in the number of homes actually being seized.

Banks repossessed 14,020 properties in the first quarter – a staggering 45 percent increase year-on-year – as lenders move more aggressively against borrowers who fall behind.

Experts say the trend points to a housing market under growing strain. ‘Foreclosure activity increased in the first quarter – with both starts and completed foreclosures posting solid year-over-year gains,’ said Rob Barber, CEO at Attom.

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A fresh wave of foreclosures is sweeping across the United States, with more than 118,000 homes caught up in the crisis in just the first three months of 2026

Coastal paradise is now ground zero for housing bloodbath… and America faces a reckoning

‘While volumes remain below historical peaks, the continued rise, especially in starts and bank repossessions, suggests financial pressure may be building for some homeowners and could signal shifting housing market dynamics.’

The crisis is not hitting evenly across the country.

States in the South and Midwest are bearing the brunt, with Indiana emerging as the worst-hit state, where one in every 739 homes is facing foreclosure.

Close behind are: South Carolina (one in 743), Florida (one in 750), Delaware (one in 757), and Illinois (one in 833).

Florida, in particular, is a major flashpoint. The state not only ranks among the worst for foreclosure rates but also saw repossessions more than double compared to last year.

At the other end of the spectrum, states like South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia remain largely insulated – for now – with far fewer properties affected.

Big metropolitan areas are also seeing a spike in foreclosure activity.

New York City recorded the highest number of foreclosure starts among major metros, followed by Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas – a sign that the pressure is reaching both urban and suburban homeowners alike.

States in the South and Midwest are bearing the brunt, with Indiana (pictured) emerging as the worst-hit state, where one in every 739 homes is facing foreclosure

Behind the numbers are homeowners increasingly struggling to keep up with mortgage payments as the cost of living remains stubbornly high

Rob Barber, CEO at ATTOM

Nationwide, roughly one in every 1,211 homes had a foreclosure filing during the quarter.

In another worrying development, the foreclosure process itself is getting faster.

Homes repossessed in early 2026 had typically been in the foreclosure pipeline for 577 days – down 14 percent from last year and continuing a steady decline.

That means struggling homeowners may now have less time to recover financially or renegotiate loans before losing their homes.

These numbers present warning signs for the wider economy.

While today’s numbers remain below the catastrophic levels seen during the 2008 housing crash, analysts say the consistent rise in both foreclosure starts and completed repossessions could signal deeper trouble ahead.

The data suggests the housing market is ‘normalizing’ after years of unusually low foreclosure activity – but for many families, that normalization comes at a painful cost.

With foreclosure filings climbing, repossessions surging, and timelines shrinking, the latest figures paint a stark picture. A growing number of Americans are being pushed to the financial brink – and losing their homes as a result.