The F1 journalist Joe Saward has a blog post about Williams, the F1 team and the domain of Nursultan Nazerbayev, also known as the Republic of Kazakhstan. It’s intriguing to see how professional journalists report on dictators’ dealings with F1 teams. In recent years, Williams has faced significant criticism for its relationship with the late Hugo Chávez, who, in his characteristic dictatorial manner, decided one day to waste millions of public funds from PDVSA on a third-tier F1 team, in a sponsorship deal that has returned zero dividends for Venezuela. The people at Williams are so confident that the money from PDVSA will keep flowing that even after Chávez’s death, they had the audacity to tell the press that their contract with PDVSA was ironclad and would continue regardless (a ridiculous claim that has no legal basis).
When I first learned about the scam, I reached out to Venezuelan congressman Carlos Ramos and basically asked him to start questioning the deal in the Venezuelan Congress. After all, our current laws state that PDVSA’s expenses must be approved by its board, but Congress has the final say on how or if proposed expenses will be approved (PDVSA is a wholly state-owned oil conglomerate). So Congressman Ramos began demanding questions about the agreement, both in Venezuela and in England, and even agreed to sign a letter I drafted which I then sent to Williams. Unfortunately, the international attention on the issue caused some problems for the congressman back home, and he admitted to me that “he was risking it all” by taking such a strong stance against the corrupt and illegal agreement.
Williams, a publicly traded company that is doing quite well, remains unfazed by the whole affair. Their thinking must be along the lines of “who are these little brown people questioning our affairs? Don’t they know our ‘contracts’ are waterproof?” So far, they have been lucky. Henrique Capriles failed to win the last election, so as long as chavismo is in power, it’s likely they will continue receiving Venezuelan public funds, unrelated to the legality of the contract but rather to the prevailing corruption and anarchy. Probably anticipating what will surely be the end of the deal if the opposition comes to power in Venezuela—which will happen regardless of what their ‘legal experts’ may say—Williams has now branched out to another dictatorship: the Republic of Kazakhstan. Its ruler, Nazerbayev, another completely corrupt and bully dictator (he calls himself Leader of the Nation in true Kim Jong-il style) has apparently agreed to provide some funds to the team. Therefore, the question I would like to pose is: which petty dictator will become the next sponsor of Williams F1?