Magaziner Calls on Fung to Reject Campaign Contribution from Putin-Linked Russian Oligarch

Also Calls on Fung to Reject Contribution from White Collar Criminal 

WARWICK, RI-  Today, the Magaziner for Congress campaign called on Allan Fung to return maximum donations he received from Leonard Blavatnik, a Russian oil oligarch, and Lewis Stahl, who was imprisoned for evading taxes on $21 million of business income.

“If it wasn’t bad enough that Allan Fung has been funding his campaign from some of the most extreme MAGA Republicans in the country, he is now also accepting from a Russian oligarch with ties to Vladimir Putin and a known tax cheat who just served a federal prison sentence for evading taxes on $21 million of income,” said Communications Director Patricia Socarras. “Rhode Islanders cannot trust that Allan Fung will be looking out for them when he is cozying up to sleazy billionaires and tax cheats. He should reject these contributions immediately.”

Leonard Blavatnik, who made a $2,900 campaign contribution to Allan Fung, and made billions through a shady Kremlin-backed oil deal personally negotiated by Vladirmir Putin and his associates. The 2013 deal orchestrated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and now Rosneft Chair Igor Sechin, Blavatnik reaped an estimated $7 billion from the sale of the oil company TNK-BP to the state-owned Rosneft conglomerate.  

Allan Fung also accepted a $5,800 campaign contribution from Lewis Stahl, a white-collar criminal who was sent to prison for evading taxes on $21 million of business income. Earlier this year, Allan Fung said he would vote against legislation that would increase the Internal Revenue Service’s tax enforcement of white collar criminals like Stahl.  This comes as the U.S. Treasury Department estimated the cost of tax evasion among the top 1 percent of taxpayers exceeds $160 billion annually, part of a ‘tax gap’ between taxes owed and those collected estimated at more than $7 trillion over a decade.