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.