Reputation laundering

Involvement in professional sports, by sponsorship or ownership, is a prominent activity used for reputation laundering. Examples include the creation of Formula 1 car races in Qatar and Saudi Arabia,[7] ownership of Chelsea F.C. by Roman Abramovich,[8] and ownership of the Newcastle United football club by Saudi Arabian investors.[9]

Reputation laundering often involves charitable donations from the persons attempting to improve their reputation. One study found that Russian oligarchs had donated between $372 million and $435 million to charitable institutions in the United States.[10] Charities and non-profits that received funds, according to a database compiled by David Szakonyi and Casey Michel include MIT, Brandeis University, Mayo Clinic, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, New York University, Brookings Institution, Harvard University, and the New York Museum of Modern Art.[10][11]

The Sackler family is particularly notable for its charitable donations that aim to repair their reputation, which was heavily damaged by their role in the opioid crisis. Since 2009, the family has donated over £170m to art institutions in the United Kingdom.[12] The family's philanthropy has been characterized as "reputation laundering" from profits acquired from the selling of opiates.[13][14] The Sackler family name, as used in institutions which the family have donated to, saw increased scrutiny in the late 2010s over the family's association with OxyContin. David Crow, writing in the Financial Times, described the family name as "tainted" (cf. Tainted donors).[15][16] In March 2019, the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate galleries announced that they would not accept further donations from the family. This came after the American photographer Nan Goldin threatened to withdraw a planned retrospective of her work in the National Portrait Gallery if the gallery accepted a £1 million donation from a Sackler fund.[17][18] In June 2019, NYU Langone Medical Center announced they will no longer be accepting donations from the Sacklers, and have since changed the name of the Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences to the Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences.[19] Later in 2019, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, each announced they will not accept future donations from any Sacklers that were involved in Purdue Pharma.[20] In 2022, the British Museum announced that it would rename the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Rooms and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Wing, as part of "development of the new masterplan", and that it "made this decision together through collaborative discussions" with the Sackler Foundation.[21] Prior to the collapse of his cryptocurrency, FTT, entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried did not have known wrong doing to launder, but is alleged to have used (among other means) "a value system of utilitarian idealism ... not orientated toward money"[22]—for example promising to give away 99 percent of his fortune[23]—which led to investors letting "down their due diligence guard."[22]

Alex Shephard, writing in the New Republic, asserts that general Mark Milley—chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—engaged in self-beneficial reputation laundering when he acted as a primary source for news media, providing media with inside accounts of events in the Trump White House.[24] Milley's intention, according to some analysts, was to prompt major media outlets to rehabilitate his reputation (tainted by the association with the Trump administration) and in exchange, Milley provided insider information to the media.[25]

Arwa Mahdawi, columnist for The Guardian, characterized Rudy Giuliani's appearance on The Masked Singer as reputation laundering.[26]

The United Kingdom government generated a report in 2020, analyzing the activities of Russian oligarchs in the United Kingdom.[27] The report states that the oligarchs had been "extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment" and had employed public relations firms that were "willing beneficiaries, contributing to a ‘reputation laundering' process".[28]

A notable example of Russian oligarchs participating in reputation laundering is Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, who donated £9 million to King Edward VII's Hospital, a facility used by the UK royal family and patronized by the queen. The donation came under scrutiny after Kantor was placed under sanctions during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the hospital removed Kantor's name from a wing of the hospital.[29]