Don Bushovich Evans

Rumors and speculation are flying that former U.S. Secretary of Commerce under Bush, Don Evans will become the chairman of Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company. In addition to enhancing the ties between Bush and the oil industry, Rosneft was the company that bought Yuganskneftegaz after the Russian government forcibly split it off from Yukos. These rumors come shortly after former German Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder joined Gazprom, the state-owned gas company, as a consultant on the pipeline to Germany that he had pushed as Prime Minister. Besides the normal conflicts of interest that seem to arise when political figures immediately move from government into business, there are other things that seem troubling about these moves. They are moving from politics into the state-owned companies of another government. Furthermore, the government they are becoming allied with has not had a very firm commitment to democracy, witness the breakup of Yukos. Then again no Bush official has really ever had a commitment to avoiding conflicts of interest or a real commitment to democracy when it got in the way of them making money.