THREAD: China's Communist Party Princelings in the art auction market. They are EVERYWHERE. We found some more fascinating links while reporting this story on a missing van Gogh painting. FOLLOW ALONG (1/x)
nytimes.com/2023/05/29/wor… We start at the Sotheby's auction on Nov. 5, 2014. The van Gogh still life was hanging behind the auctioneer, Henry Wyndham. Sotheby's put out a Youtube video of the auction. When the bidding for the van Gogh starts, it briefly pans to a woman on the phone

THREAD: The incredible parallels - spanning 133 years -- between two van Gogh paintings. Something @QianIsabelle @muyixiao @vwang3 and I discovered writing this story about one of them, "Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies" (1/x) nytimes.com/2023/05/29/wor… The other painting in this tale is "Portrait of Dr. Gachet," one of van Gogh's masterpieces, which hasn't been seen by the public for a third of a century. (2/x)

THREAD: How one of China's most notorious (and now jailed) financiers set up an offshore shell company to buy expensive art, including a $62m van Gogh, and how banks, brokerages and auction houses went along with it. FOLLOW ALONG. LOTS AND LOTS OF DOCUMENTS. (1/x) The notorious financier: Xiao Jianhua, now jailed for bribery and serving a 13-year sentence. The public owner: movie producer Wang Zhongjun. Read all about it in this story, w/ @QianIsabelle @muyixiao @vwang3 (2/x) nytimes.com/2023/05/29/wor…

PUB DAY for "When McKinsey Comes to Town." This is much more than a book about a consulting firm: McKinsey is how ideas like high CEO pay, offshoring, asset securitization, and mega-profit healthcare spread far and wide. THIS THREAD describes our journey. penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634029/w… So @waltbogdanich had wanted to dive deep into McKinsey since before Trump was elected president. He saw inequality as a driving issue in the 2016 election and wanted to get at the root causes of it. He brought me on in early 2018. But our initial focus was on South Africa.(2/x)

THREAD: McKinsey's Trifecta of Addiction. The firm's work with opioid makers like Purdue Pharma is well known, but what hasn't come to light is McKinsey's decades of work with tobacco companies and, more recently, with Juul. By @waltbogdanich and me. (1/x)
nytimes.com/2022/09/29/bus… @waltbogdanich Let's start with tobacco. McKinsey only stopped helping tobacco companies like Altria market their killer products LAST YEAR, 57 years after the US Surgeon General told the world that smoking is linked to lung cancer, years after smoking had been banished from public spaces (2/x)

THREAD: Just an enraging and heartbreaking story from @jbsgreenberg and @katie_thomas about a hospital chain aggressively billing low-income patients *who were eligible for free care* to boost profits. And McKinsey was in the middle of it. (1/x) nytimes.com/2022/09/24/bus… @jbsgreenberg @katie_thomas "In 2018, senior executives at one of the country’s largest nonprofit hospital chains, Providence, were frustrated. They were spending hundreds of millions of dollars providing free health care to patients. It was eating into their bottom line." - so they turned to McKinsey.(2/x)

Xiao Jianhua, banker to China's red elite, sentenced to 13 years in prison for corruption. The things Xiao knows, if made public, could shake the CCP to its core. We at the NYT have uncovered bits of that story over the years. By @jotted. nytimes.com/2022/08/19/bus… @jotted Both @DavidBarboza2 and I were fascinated with the rise of Xiao and teamed up to write this story about him in 2014 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.
nytimes.com/2014/06/04/wor…

SHORT THREAD: Now that the billionaire Xiao Jianhua is going on trial, here's some primary-source materials showing his connection to the family of Chinese president Xi Jinping and the son-in-law of the former No. 4 member of the Chinese Communist Party. Just over a month after Xi Jinping took the helm of the CCP in Nov. 2012, a company controlled by his sister and his brother-in-law sold a stake in an investment company, Jianyin Yuanwei, to a company set up by Xiao Jianhua, Beijing Kanghai Tianda.

Eduard Khudainatov sanctioned by EU. The NYT reported this week that he's owner (on paper) of $1.6b in yachts (Amadea, Crescent, Scheherazade) & a spectacular Italian villa. These assets are all linked to Evgeniy Kochman, the Imperial Yachts head sanctioned yesterday by the US

https://twitter.com/alexzfinley/status/1532746105477337088

Here's our investigation published Wednesday. With @gaia_pianigiani @julianbarnes - then yesterday the US sanctioned Kochman, Imperial Yachts and the villa company BLD Management.
nytimes.com/2022/06/01/wor…

BREAKING: The US is sanctioning Imperial Yachts and its founder, Evgeniy Kochman. Kochman and Imperial Yachts were the focus of a NYT investigation published yesterday. by @julianbarnes and me. nytimes.com/2022/06/02/us/… @julianbarnes ICYMI, here's our story on Imperial Yachts, by @gaia_pianigiani @julianbarnes and me. Today Treasury not only sanctioned IY and Kochman, but also Kochman's villa company BLD and Imperial's flagship charter yacht, Flying Fox
nytimes.com/2022/06/01/wor…

A STORY ABOUT POWER: In Jan. 2018, McKinsey was preparing a policy memo for the incoming HHS Secretary, Alex Azar. One section was called "Tackling the Opioid Epidemic" and it had some hard hitting language in it. But Azar never saw that version. Here's what happened. (1/x) The draft memo was sobering about the severity of the crisis, stating "millions of Americans are addicted to opioids" and that was contributing to a decline in life expectancy in the US. Vital issues for any HHS secretary to grasp. Here's what it said. (2/x)

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT! - In the works for more than 4 years, @waltbogdanich and I are proud that @doubledaybooks will publish "When McKinsey Comes to Town" on Oct. 4. This THREAD offers a sneak peak (and pre-order info!) @waltbogdanich @doubledaybooks There are many excellent books about influential companies and their outsized influence on our world, but McKinsey has a huge influence on THOUSANDS of companies and HUNDREDS of governments, national, state and local. That's what drew us to take on this project.

NEW: Putin’s Superyacht? Italian police will find out today who owns one of the world’s biggest, newest and most expensive yachts, the Scheherazade. Locals in the Tuscan port where it’s moored call it “Putin’s Yacht”. So does a former crew member. With @gaia_pianigiani @ddknyt Here’s the story. The Russian fingerprints on the yacht are obvious. Trips to Sochi on Russia’s Black Sea coast in the past two summers since the ship’s launch, a 70% Russian crew, a construction manager known to cater to the Oligarchs. nytimes.com/2022/03/08/wor…

THREAD: I have been documenting the assets of China’s top leaders for 10 years now. It is not easy. And it is getting harder. But it is a walk in the park compared to tracking the wealth of Vladimir Putin. 1/x I took a brief foray into the world of Putin’s wealth with @mmcintire - just published. We found wildly varying estimates of his wealth, mostly guesswork. 2/x nytimes.com/2022/02/26/wor…

So many cities - Hong Kong and Beijing among them - have these life saving barriers and doors. It boggles my mind that we don’t have these in NY. Maybe spend some of that infrastructure money on these?

https://twitter.com/alexaforcouncil/status/1482497102546616320

Here’s the London tube, the oldest subway system in the world, with platform barriers. Granted this is one of the newish lines (Jubilee?) and other lines don’t have these yet, but the effort was made.

Reminder: one of the investors in Canoo is Li Botan, the highly, um, acquisitive son-in-law of the former number 4 ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party. More on him here: nytimes.com/2015/04/29/wor…

https://twitter.com/sokane1/status/1473015601991933958

He shows up here in this 2014 story as well, as his business empire intersected with future abductee billionaire Xiao Jianhua. nytimes.com/2014/06/04/wor…

CHINA'S RISE to dominate the clean energy revolution is a story that can be told from many angles. The miners in Congo, frustrated US diplomats in DC. Here, I'll show you how Chinese company documents tell their own tale, and can deepen your understanding of China. A THREAD(1/x) First, read our story, led by @dionnesearcey from in the DR Congo, @EricLiptonNYT in DC. It shows how the tired "great game" rivalry is playing out again in Africa, this time over the new oil - minerals that are driving the clean energy revolution. (2/x)
nytimes.com/2021/11/20/wor…

THREAD: The book "Red Roulette" is a rare insider's account about corruption at the highest levels of China's government. Much of what the author, Desmond Shum, says can be backed up with documents. But the docs also show how much he may be holding back. Let's dive in! (1/x) (2/x) First, have a read of @LiYuan6 excellent article about the book. No one is better plugged in than she is. nytimes.com/2021/09/24/bus…

THREAD: The horrific murders of 8 people last week in Atlanta have led us to focus more on the spa industry, specifically who OWNS and operates the spas. The answers surprised us. nytimes.com/2021/03/24/us/… 2/x. First, read the story. @corinaknoll , the lead writer, really draws a contrast between the lives of two branches of Asian-Americans - a group w/ the biggest wealth gap in the US. @FrancesRobles and I combed records and made calls. @YLindaQiu hit the pavement in Atlanta.

THREAD: McKinsey is settling with 47 states over its work with opioid makers, but there is MUCH more in the settlement. FOLLOW ALONG. By me and @waltbogdanich nytimes.com/2021/02/03/bus… 2/x: So McKinsey isn't admitting wrongdoing, but they are submitting to some big court-ordered changes. First, McKinsey has agreed to stop doing consulting work for pharmaceutical companies for certain types of addictive narcotics.

One reason there hasn’t been a good biography of Xi Jinping is the enormous personal cost. The CCP jealously guards his official story. Attempts to do in-country research on his youth or his decade in Fujian is dangerous for you, anyone working for you, and anyone you interview

https://twitter.com/CurtisSChin/status/1355750850271064065

And how can any serious biography not make a bold attempt to get to the bottom of his time as a teenager in the Cultural Revolution or his meteoric rise in Fujian during a time the province was awash in massive corruption scandals. And what about his first wife?