McKinsey’s Dealings With Despots Are More Extensive Than We Knew

But
McKinsey’s foreign work didn’t stop there. As investigators discovered, the
firm has significantly expanded its relationship with Narendra Modi’s
government in India, even as Modi has degraded Indian democracy, lurching New
Delhi toward outright authoritarianism. According to McKinsey’s managing
partner Bob Sternfels—who had previously refused to comply with congressional
subpoenas about the firm’s work abroad—the firm is aiming to double its size
in India in the coming years. As part of its work on behalf of Modi’s
government, McKinsey helped lead “performance improvement plans” at several
state-owned oil refineries, even bidding on projects to increase India’s oil
exploration—bringing that much more boodle to Modi’s government in the
process.

The
hits keep coming. As the investigation uncovered, McKinsey had also worked
directly with the most prominent financial institutions in Russia—even after
Russia first launched its invasion of Ukraine. As the court records reveal, McKinsey identified
“Sberbank of Russia” as one of its clients. It’s unclear from the documents
what, exactly, McKinsey did on behalf of the Russian firm. But when the U.S.
specifically sanctioned Sberbank in 2022, American officials described the bank as one that is
“uniquely important to the Russian economy,” as well as the “largest financial
institution in Russia,” helping bankroll Russia’s devastation of Ukraine. The
same goes for other Russian clients that McKinsey serviced, such as the oil
company Gazprom, the major Russian bank VTB, and further entities buttressing
Moscow’s war machine—all of which the documents now reveal as McKinsey
patrons.

The
list of McKinsey’s foreign clients runs on and on. There’s the Emirates Group,
owned by the dictatorship in the United Arab Emirates. There’s Qatar Petroleum,
overseen by that firm’s namesake regime. There’s the Kuwait Petroleum
Corporation, the primary piggy bank for the autocrats in Kuwait. There’s the
authoritarian regime in Angola, the military dictatorship in Egypt, firms in despotic
countries like Equatorial Guinea—the roster appears bottomless.