An interesting article on connections between the Russian mob, Putin, the KGB, and Russian investors.
The Facebook angle is just a bit of linkbait spice, and is only a small part of the article.
If I were Zuckerberg, I wouldn't really care where my investors were. Once you are liquid, you just can't control what happens to your shares. And at Facebook's stage of development, they aren't going to change direction just to get another minority investor (unlike a new start-up, which can be sunk by a VC overthrowing their CEO, stacking the board, wiping out the value of employee options, and other such tricks). I'd watch my back when travelling in Russia, though (whether or not I'd taken their money).
edit: other interesting bits - legal threats against bloggers; and ISPs taking down blogs due to the threats.
But let me ask you something. If Mark isn't in this for the money (that's the way he's painted anyway, since he could have sold or gone public long ago for tons of cash), what exactly does he want? Why keep that kind of control (3/5 board seats, private company)? What exactly does he want?
He already answered this in an interview about the Social Network. A lot of people in Hollywood (and in general) don't understand the concept of just loving to build things. Facebook was built by him and it's gotten insanely huge and when you've dedicated a large portion of your life to something like that, you don't want to give it up. No other work would be satisfying; facebook is his.
Some people truly love doing this stuff and don't build it to flip it and that throws people off
The Facebook angle is just a bit of linkbait spice, and is only a small part of the article.
If I were Zuckerberg, I wouldn't really care where my investors were. Once you are liquid, you just can't control what happens to your shares. And at Facebook's stage of development, they aren't going to change direction just to get another minority investor (unlike a new start-up, which can be sunk by a VC overthrowing their CEO, stacking the board, wiping out the value of employee options, and other such tricks). I'd watch my back when travelling in Russia, though (whether or not I'd taken their money).
edit: other interesting bits - legal threats against bloggers; and ISPs taking down blogs due to the threats.