About four miles from where the McKinsey consultants discussed their work, which includes advising some of China\u2019s most important state-owned companies, a sprawling internment camp had sprung up to hold thousands of ethnic Uighurs \u2014 part of a vast archipelago of indoctrination camps where the Chinese government has locked up as many as one million people<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One week before the McKinsey event, a United Nations committee had denounced the mass detentions and urged China to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the political backdrop did not appear to bother the McKinsey consultants, who posted pictures on Instagram chronicling their Disney-like adventures. In fact, McKinsey\u2019s involvement with the Chinese government goes much deeper than its odd choice to showcase its presence in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a quarter-century, the company has joined many American corporations in helping stoke China\u2019s transition from an economic laggard to the world\u2019s second-largest economy. But as China\u2019s growth presents a muscular challenge to American dominance, Washington has become increasingly critical of some of Beijing\u2019s signature policies, including the ones McKinsey has helped advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of McKinsey\u2019s state-owned clients has even helped build China\u2019s artificial islands in the South China Sea<\/a>, a major point of military tension with the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It turns out that McKinsey\u2019s role in China is just one example of its extensive \u2014 and sometimes contentious \u2014 work around the world, according to an investigation by The New York Times that included interviews with 40 current and former McKinsey employees, as well as dozens of their clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At a time when democracies and their basic values are increasingly under attack, the iconic American company has helped raise the stature of authoritarian and corrupt governments across the globe, sometimes in ways that counter American interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Its clients have included Saudi Arabia\u2019s absolute monarchy, Turkey under the autocratic leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and corruption-plagued governments in countries like South Africa<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ukraine, McKinsey and Paul Manafort \u2014 President Trump\u2019s campaign chairman, later convicted of financial fraud<\/a> \u2014 were paid by the same oligarch to help burnish the image of a disgraced presidential candidate, Viktor F. Yanukovych<\/a>, recasting him as a reformer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once in office, Mr. Yanukovych rebuffed the West, sided with Russia and fled the country, accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars. The events set off years of chaos in Ukraine and an international standoff with the Kremlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inside Russia itself, McKinsey has worked with Kremlin-linked companies that have been placed under sanctions by Western governments \u2014 companies that the firm helped build up over the years and, in some cases, continues to advise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has consulted in many sectors of the Russian economy, including mining, manufacturing, oil and gas, banking, transportation and agriculture. A McKinsey official sat on the Russian government\u2019s energy board. Former McKinsey consultants have gone to work in the Russian companies they once advised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In August, VEB Bank \u2014 which is wholly owned by the Russian state, intertwined with Russian intelligence and under United States sanctions \u2014 hired McKinsey to develop its business strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no indication that McKinsey has violated American sanctions, which prohibit only certain transactions with targeted companies and individuals. But the larger question is whether the company, in pursuing legitimate business opportunities abroad, is helping to shore up President Vladimir V. Putin\u2019s autocratic leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other consulting companies serve similar clients, but none have the stature to confer credibility quite like McKinsey, a confidant for 92 years to many of the world\u2019s most admired companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In China, it has advised at least 22 of the 100 biggest state-owned companies \u2014 the ones carrying out some of the government\u2019s most strategic and divisive initiatives, according to a review of Chinese-language material by The Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While it is not unusual for American corporations to work with China\u2019s state-owned companies, McKinsey\u2019s role has sometimes put it in the middle of deeply troubled deals. In Malaysia, the company laid out the case for one of Asia\u2019s most corrupt leaders to pursue billions of dollars from China at a time when he was suspected of funneling vast sums of public money into his own pocket, drawing tens of thousands into the streets to protest against him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey defends its work around the world, saying that it will not accept jobs at odds with the company\u2019s values. It also gives the same reason that other companies cite for working in corrupt or authoritarian nations \u2014 that change is best achieved from the inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSince 1926, McKinsey has sought to make a positive difference to the businesses and communities in which our people live and work,\u201d the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTens of thousands of jobs have been created, lives improved and education provided thanks to the work we have done with our clients,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLike many other major corporations including our competitors, we seek to navigate a changing geopolitical environment,\u201d the company said, \u201cbut we do not support or engage in political activities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, some analysts, veteran diplomats and experts on global governance see McKinsey\u2019s role in a different light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the United States pulls back from international cooperation and adopts a more nationalist stance, major companies like McKinsey are pursuing business in countries with little regard for human rights \u2014 sometimes advancing, rather than curbing, the contentious tactics of America\u2019s biggest rivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is more likely they enable these regimes and likely become complicit,\u201d said David J. Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to alienate regimes, or they would lose business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His bona fides included two criminal convictions and a rigged election that, many assumed, had finally doomed his presidential ambitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it was a bit surprising when McKinsey helped polish the battered image of Mr. Yanukovych and pitch him as something else: a forward-thinking leader with an economic vision of a better future for all Ukrainians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey\u2019s role in resurrecting Mr. Yanukovych\u2019s political career has been lost in the clamor surrounding the conviction of Mr. Manafort, Mr. Trump\u2019s former campaign chairman, for secretly taking millions of dollars to help the Ukranian leader win the presidency in 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But McKinsey was financed by the same oligarch who backed Mr. Manafort, and it wrote an economic plan that Mr. Yanukovych wielded to disarm his critics \u2014 before discarding much of it after becoming president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On his 100th day in office, in a Soviet-era palace adorned with Cossack art, Mr. Yanukovych stiffly briefed the nation, laying out his economic plan. After sipping Cognac and Scotch, legislators and guests packed the hall, where the cameras conspicuously stopped on a man with a bright blue suit and a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 that touched the lives of virtually everyone in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His name: Rinat Akhmetov<\/a>, the country\u2019s richest oligarch. As much as anyone, he was the reason for the gathering, and he had reason to feel good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He had rescued Mr. Yanukovych through a strategy that included hiring two very different consulting groups: Mr. Manafort, whose Russian-linked team had worked for dictators with little regard for human rights, and McKinsey, the purveyor of best practices for the world\u2019s most important corporations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That these two disparate groups found common ground is a testament to Mr. Akhmetov\u2019s vast business empire and political skill. But for McKinsey, it underscored the risk of consulting in an unstable part of the world, where the company might be perceived as enabling autocratic or corrupt governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Manafort\u2019s job was twofold: to soften Mr. Yanukovych\u2019s reputation and strengthen his Russian-leaning Party of Regions, facilitating his rise to the presidency. McKinsey provided something different \u2014 an economic plan that Mr. Yanukovych could use to portray himself as a market-based reformer, tilting to the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To ensure that the message got through, Mr. Yanukovych and Mr. Akhmetov pointedly mentioned McKinsey in talks with American officials, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. Mr. Akhmetov assured the Americans that his candidate was \u201ca strong McKinsey supporter,\u201d while Mr. Yanukovych emphasized that he had instructed his aides \u201cto work directly with McKinsey experts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Diplomats remained wary. A respected Ukrainian journalist warned American officials that Mr. Yanukovych might \u201csing a song one moment and knife someone the next.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were also questions about Mr. Akhmetov, who had long been suspected of links to organized crime, which he denied. One diplomat called his Party of Regions a haven for \u201cmobsters and oligarchs,\u201d noting that it might be trying to shed that image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Akhmetov\u2019s financial ties to Mr. Manafort and McKinsey went beyond politics. He hired both to advise parts of his corporate empire, which included steel, mining, energy, finance, telecommunications, real estate, media, transportation, agriculture and soccer. He also hired former McKinsey consultants to help run his businesses, placing them in senior positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Akhmetov paid Mr. Manafort by wire transfers funneled through a Cypriot shell company, court records show. Other Party of Regions operatives paid Mr. Manafort through shell companies, eventually resulting in his conviction in the United States for failing to declare the money on his tax returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey, by contrast, was paid through a Ukrainian foundation financed by Mr. Akhmetov and run by a former McKinsey consultant now living in Moscow. Set up to promote economic reform, the foundation also sought to publicize McKinsey \u2014 and by extension, Mr. Yanukovych.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To reach its prime audience in the United States, the foundation held two forums on the Ukrainian economy \u2014 one at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York and the other in Washington. On the whole, McKinsey\u2019s work was well received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the promise of a better future didn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within a few years, Ukraine careened toward economic collapse while Mr. Yanukovych looted the nation, living in a palatial residence<\/a> surrounded by a private zoo, a golf course, a garage filled with classic cars and a private restaurant in the form of a pirate ship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If that were not enough, he was also quietly building\u00a0an enormous seaside retreat<\/a>, complete with 40-foot ceilings and an indoor swimming pool, that eclipsed his presidential residence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The capital soon turned against him. Mr. Yanukovych had long promised to tie Ukraine to the West by signing sweeping political and trade agreements with the European Union. Then he abruptly reneged, siding with Russia instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Protesters flooded the streets for months, chanting pro-Europe slogans. Mr. Yanukovych\u2019s government responded with a heavy hand, culminating in what the European Parliament\u2019s envoy called a \u201cUkrainian Tiananmen<\/a>,\u201d referring to China\u2019s deadly crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. More than 80 protesters were killed before Mr. Yanukovych fled the country<\/a> in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The chaos didn\u2019t end there. Outraged, Mr. Putin pushed into Ukraine, annexed Crimea<\/a> and stirred up a war that has claimed more than 10,000 lives. The West responded by kicking Russia out of the Group of 8 industrialized democracies and imposing sanctions. The standoff between Mr. Putin and the West had begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey defended its role in Mr. Yanukovych\u2019s rise by saying that the foundation was serious about promoting economic development in Ukraine and featured prominent Westerners on its board. The foundation quietly folded \u2014 without achieving its goals \u2014 just before Mr. Yanukovych fled to Russia. Neither Mr. Akhmetov nor McKinsey would say how much money McKinsey earned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen we concluded that the government was not following through on its stated reform agenda, we ended our work,\u201d McKinsey said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Akhmetov, who publicly broke with Mr. Yanukovych during the protests, declined to speak to The Times. Inside his gold and chrome headquarters, a spokesman said the foundation had been unsuccessful because politicians lacked the will \u201cto embrace the reform agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But critics like Anders Aslund, a Swedish-born economist who advised the Russian government in the 1990s and later the government of Ukraine, lamented how Mr. Yanokovych\u2019s image had been sold in Western capitals. It was clear, he said, that Mr. Yanokovych \u201cwas about power and robbery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey\u2019s role in Ukraine did not end with Mr. Yanukovych\u2019s downfall. \u201cWe build leaders who can deliver lasting, meaningful impact for Ukraine\u2019s major companies, its economy and society,\u201d the company wrote on its website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a speech last November, Mr. Poroshenko praised McKinsey for its 15 years of work in Ukraine. His daughter-in-law also worked for the company during most of his presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, McKinsey has continued to consult for Mr. Akhmetov, sharing the top floor of a Kiev office building with an Akhmetov company. Another Akhmetov company sits a floor below. In fact, Mr. Akhmetov owns the entire building, which includes a business in the lobby fit for an oligarch: an Aston Martin-Rolls Royce dealership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deep in the Malaysian jungle, a sprawling construction site sits abandoned, the relentless monsoon rain taking its toll on the rusting fields of steel girders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is supposed to be a railway \u2014 part of China\u2019s signature Belt and Road Initiative, a $1 trillion global undertaking financed by big Chinese loans, and usually built by Chinese companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chief among them is the China Communications Construction Company, a state-owned behemoth whose initials are stenciled in black on the cement plant at the abandoned site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China Communications, which was barred for eight years<\/a> from doing business on some World Bank projects because of a corruption scandal, played a leading role in building artificial islands in the South China Sea that have raised tensions with the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company\u2019s subsidiary also built a new port for Sri Lanka. But the debt turned out to be such a burden that the Sri Lankan government had to give up the port and hand it over for 99 years<\/a> \u2014 to China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sri Lanka\u2019s fate was so alarming that Malaysia\u2019s new prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, worried that the same thing might happen to him<\/a>. So he suspended the railway project in July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat is not good for us,\u201d Mr. Mahathir said in September. \u201cMalaysian workers have no jobs that they can do. All the work is hired from China. You can see how one-sided it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for McKinsey, it was anything but one-sided. The company represented both parties involved in the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2015, as China Communications was building the artificial islands and still under World Bank sanctions, McKinsey signed it on as a client, advising it on strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Months later, McKinsey won another contract: this one with the Malaysian government, to review the feasibility of the rail line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a confidential PowerPoint report, McKinsey told Malaysian officials that the rail line could increase economic growth in parts of the country by as much as 1.5 percent. It was a figure that the prime minister at the time, Najib Razak, who now has been charged with corruption<\/a>, liked to cite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In bullet points, McKinsey also said the project would help improve ties with China \u2014 \u201cbuild the nation-to-nation relationship\u201d \u2014 because of its importance in China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And McKinsey endorsed the idea of heavy borrowing from China, referring to it as a \u201cgame changer\u201d elsewhere in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It isn\u2019t hard to see where McKinsey\u2019s enthusiasm for the Belt and Road Initiative came from: The firm had promoted the Chinese policy at the highest levels of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It isn\u2019t hard to see where McKinsey\u2019s enthusiasm for the Belt and Road Initiative came from: The firm had promoted the Chinese policy at the highest levels of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dominic Barton, McKinsey\u2019s managing partner at the time, made Belt and Road the theme of a keynote address in Beijing in 2015, recounting the Silk Road trade from the second century B.C. onward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey\u2019s in-house research group, the McKinsey Global Institute, sprang into action, producing reports \u2014 widely cited in the Chinese state news media \u2014 extolling the benefits of the Belt and Road Initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Barton \u2014 who has served on the advisory board of China Development Bank, one of the two biggest Chinese lenders to the Belt and Road Initiative \u2014 also batted down concerns in a 2015 interview with Chinese state media that the undertaking might be used as a tool to expand China\u2019s global influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe world is waiting for the \u2018One Belt, One Road\u2019 grand blueprint to move from dream to reality,\u201d Mr. Barton and his colleagues wrote in a report published on the company\u2019s Chinese website in May 2015, expressing McKinsey\u2019s enthusiasm to work on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The feeling was mutual. Nine of the top 20 Belt-and-Road contractors are or have been McKinsey clients, according to research by The Times and figures from RWR Advisory Group, which tracks such projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2016, McKinsey\u2019s client, China Communications, won the $13 billion contract to build the Malaysian railroad. McKinsey justified the project at a time when Mr. Najib was widely accused of corruption, buffeted by street protests over the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars from a state investment fund, and badly in need of cash from an outside lender like China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The scandal over the deal has enveloped both of McKinsey\u2019s clients. Mr. Mahatir told local reporters that China Communications, which won a no-bid contract for the railroad, may have deliberately overstated the costs in order to help Mr. Najib and his allies shovel extra money into the investment fund to replenish the missing amounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tony Pua, a Malaysian lawmaker and an aide to the finance minister, said the deal was brokered by a hard-partying<\/a> Malaysian businessman named Jho Low, who is accused of siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars from the fund and is now believed to be in China, avoiding a Malaysian arrest warrant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey says it has no knowledge of any collusion between China and Mr. Najib. It said that of course it would discuss China\u2019s sweeping Belt and Road plans but rejected the notion that, by representing both sides involved in the project, the company had a conflict of interest in any way. By the time China Communications won the bid, its work for Malaysia had already finished, the firm said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur firm\u2019s rigorous internal policies and procedures\u201d ensure that \u201cwe bring an independent perspective\u201d to help each client \u201cpursue its own strategic goals,\u201d McKinsey said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the political backdrop \u2014 a government facing crippling corruption accusations and the prospect that Mr. Najib might turn to China for funds to cover his tracks \u2014 should have been obvious to McKinsey at the time, argued Bridget Welsh, a professor at John Cabot University in Rome who focuses on Malaysian politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey were choosing to engage with actors that were deeply tainted,\u201d Ms. Welsh said of McKinsey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was not the first time McKinsey had been drawn into questionable arrangements through its work in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company opened its first office there in 1995, using consultants from the United States and Britain. By the end the decade, McKinsey was on hand to help as Beijing began pushing its moribund state-owned companies to adopt Western-style management, a McKinsey specialty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The firm landed some big clients. Its star pupil was Ping An, an insurance company set up as part of a state-owned shipping company. Beginning in 1997, McKinsey began a two-decade relationship with the company as it rose from a footnote to one of the world\u2019s biggest insurers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey\u2019s success soon reached into the pinnacle of Chinese politics, dragging it \u2014 unwittingly and unknowingly, the company contends \u2014 into a potential conflict of interest in the most glaring example of official enrichment in the history of the People\u2019s Republic of China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Always in search of top talent, McKinsey brought on a 27-year-old named Liu Chunhang as a full-time associate in 2002. He had just graduated near the top of his class at Harvard Business School, according to school records, and stayed at McKinsey for less than a year. But in that time, his in-laws took steps that would turn them into billionaires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Liu was the son-in-law of Wen Jiabao, the country\u2019s vice premier in charge of finance. Several months later, Mr. Wen became China\u2019s premier, putting him in charge of running the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time, McKinsey\u2019s client, Ping An, was preparing for an initial public offering in Hong Kong. The Wen family and its business associates became secret shareholders of Ping An<\/a>, having acquired their stakes at low cost in late 2002. And as premier, Mr. Wen presided over China\u2019s cabinet, which oversaw the insurance industry and signed off on big I.P.O.s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to McKinsey, Mr. Liu left the company in July 2003. It\u2019s not clear whether he played any role in his extended family\u2019s business activities. But when Ping An went public the next year, the Wen family amassed a staggering fortune, largely in company stock.\u00a0By 2007, the family was worth at least $2.7 billion.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Liu, who is now a senior official at China\u2019s banking regulator, said through a spokesman that he \u201cnever worked on any projects for the firm\u2019s Chinese clients,\u201d and that it would be \u201cmisleading\u201d to connect him with McKinsey\u2019s work for Ping An.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey said that Mr. Liu had been hired because he was qualified, not because of his family connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAny suggestion that Mr. Liu was hired or employed for improper purpose is false and extremely misleading,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, China\u2019s best and brightest clamor to work at McKinsey. Partners in the firm have sat in on Communist Party meetings at companies. More than 90 percent of the company\u2019s 350 consultants in China are of Chinese descent, according to its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the importance of China to McKinsey over all is evident: The firm\u2019s last two managing partners, Mr. Barton and Kevin Sneader, were promoted from the region. Mr. Sneader now runs the entire company from Hong Kong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey\u2019s name has become so prestigious in the country that a Chinese copycat sprang up, adopting the company\u2019s Chinese name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The copycat firm \u2014 Chengdu McKinsey Management Consulting Company \u2014 even won a contract to advise Sichuan Province on its economic planning. Its ruse was so successful that the China Economic Weekly, a magazine under the Communist Party\u2019s mouthpiece People\u2019s Daily, wrote a cover article<\/a> about the spreading influence of the real McKinsey, likening it to an octopus, and marveling at the success of the fake one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey said it had not worked on the economic planning in Sichuan Province.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company, however, has not shied away from contentious programs like \u201cSmart Cities,\u201d worrying scholars and human rights advocates who say the approach will strengthen China\u2019s surveillance state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea of smart cities is to make them more manageable by collecting data from sources like cameras. In an authoritarian state like China, that raises broad concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPolice patrols cannot be everywhere, for instance, but predictive analytics can deploy them in the right place at the right time,\u201d McKinsey wrote in a report in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is about political control,\u201d said Samantha Hoffman, a fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey is now working with Ping An to put smart cities into practice in the Chinese city of Nanning to monitor financial fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company has also championed \u2014 even parroted, critics say \u2014 the Chinese government\u2019s \u201cMade in China 2025\u201d initiative to become a global leader in sensitive fields like artificial intelligence and aerospace, a policy rattling European and American leaders who fear the plans will undermine their economies and set the stage for Chinese dominance<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In October, Vice President Mike Pence warned that \u201cthrough the \u2018Made in China 2025\u2019 plan, the Communist Party has set its sights on controlling 90 percent of the world\u2019s most advanced industries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey has produced at least 10 reports in Chinese focusing on \u201cMade in China 2025.\u201d But earlier this year, China\u2019s government ordered the news media to stop writing about it, given the intense criticism from the United States and Europe. McKinsey\u2019s reports also stopped mentioning the policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey sometimes seem to be almost like an arm of the People\u2019s Daily,\u201d George Magnus, a former chief economist at UBS, said of McKinsey. \u201cObviously they do it in a slightly more subtle way \u2014 sometimes not so subtle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Senate investigators wanted to know why Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump\u2019s son-in-law, met with the head of a Russian bank under sanctions shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Mr. Kushner explained that, as far as he had been told, the bank chief had \u201ca direct line to the Russian president<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is easy to see how. The bank \u2014 Vnesheconombank, or VEB \u2014 is owned by the Russian government and overseen directly<\/a> by Mr. Putin\u2019s inner circle. The bank\u2019s former chief \u2014 the one Mr. Kushner met \u2014 graduated from the training school of the F.S.B., the successor agency of the K.G.B. The bank has also come under scrutiny in Congress and by the special counsel investigating possible collusion in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the bank is a McKinsey client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In August, VEB hired the consulting firm to develop its business strategy \u2014 one of several companies that are under sanctions and that McKinsey advises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sberbank \u2014 a state-controlled bank that is on the sanctions list and that sponsored Mr. Trump\u2019s Miss Universe contest in Moscow in 2013 \u2014 is also a McKinsey client. In 2016, it agreed to pay the firm up to $5.2 million for advice on restructuring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet another state-owned bank under sanctions, VTB, agreed to pay McKinsey about $4.4 million in 2017 to develop information technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey\u2019s work in Russia is extensive. Its Moscow office, the largest of the Western consulting firms working there, has handled about 2,000 projects, working with market leaders in oil, gas, banking and retail, as well as the mining of diamonds, gold and coal. One of its senior partners is the son of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey is so valued in Russia that even as Mr. Putin and Western nations clashed over Ukraine, a partner in the firm served on a Russian energy commission until 2015, along with several business executives who were either the target of individual sanctions or had ties to companies under sanction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey clients help expand Russia\u2019s reach abroad. One of them \u2014 PhosAgro, a fertilizer giant with ties to the Kremlin \u2014 is pushing hard for new regulations that would give it greater control over Europe\u2019s food supply<\/a>. The European Union already had concerns about Russian influence over its natural gas supply, much of which came from Gazprom, another Russian company under sanctions that McKinsey has advised on strategy and pricing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey says it takes jobs in Russia \u2014 or anywhere in the world \u2014 only when it believes it can make a positive contribution. McKinsey also says its consulting is not political in nature, but focused on helping people lead better lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The firm has plenty of accomplishments to point to. In Russia alone, it upgraded Aeroflot, the national airline, improved traffic flow in Moscow and improved worker safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And McKinsey is far from the only American company working in legal ways with companies under sanctions. Some American officials have long argued that getting involved in the Russian economy not only benefits the American companies working there, but can also help foster better business practices and a greater appreciation for democratic principles overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Others see little evidence of that. Robert G. Berschinski, a State Department official in the Obama administration, said business leaders and policymakers often believed that actively engaging with authoritarian governments would lead to economic reform, which in turn would drive political reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut what is becoming increasingly clear, in Russia, China and Saudi Arabia \u2014 in all three of those instances \u2014 that belief has not proven to be true,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China is a prime example, argued Mr. Kramer, the former assistant secretary of state. He said the country had lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, yet companies that do business there \u201chave nothing to point to\u201d showing that Chinese people have been granted more civil or political rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In some cases, McKinsey\u2019s work may have made things worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The firm produced a report tracking how some of Saudi Arabia\u2019s most important policies were viewed by the public, singling out three individuals who drove often negative conversations on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One was later arrested<\/a>, according to a human rights group. Another said that Saudi government officials had imprisoned two of his brothers and hacked his cellphone. The third \u2014 an anonymous account \u2014 was shut down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKinsey said it was \u201chorrified by the possibility, however remote,\u201d that the report could have been misused. But the kingdom is such a vital client for the firm \u2014 the source of nearly 600 projects from 2011 to 2016 alone \u2014 that McKinsey chose to participate in a major Saudi investment conference in October even after the\u00a0killing and dismemberment<\/a>\u00a0of a Washington Post columnist by Saudi agents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe world is divided into people who are for beheadings and against beheadings,\u201d said Anand Giridharadas, a former McKinsey consultant and former Times writer. He added that the firm and other companies were lending \u201ctheir reputation and credibility to a regime that deserves none of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For 19 months, Calvert W. Jones, a University of Maryland professor, crisscrossed the Gulf monarchies in the Middle East as part of her research evaluating the work of management consultants in what she calls \u201cthe black box of authoritarian governance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven if democracy itself remains a distant hope, so the thinking goes, experts might improve the daily lives of citizens in fundamental ways,\u201d Ms. Jones wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her conclusions are not likely to make it into recruiting videos for consulting companies seeking idealistic college graduates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the beginning, the best of them want to help, want to do real research, provide data and expert opinions,\u201d she said. But after initially speaking their minds, she said, they gradually stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey engage in the art of not speaking truth to power,\u201d she said. \u201cThey self-censor, exaggerate successes and downplay their own misgivings due to the incentive structures they face.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside experts might even reduce, rather than encourage, domestic reform, Ms. Jones said, partly because consultants are often unwilling to level with the ruling elite. The issue is becoming increasingly relevant, she said, as \u201cthe number of experts circulating around the world continues to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The expansion is clear enough in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh on a weekday morning. There, a former Western diplomat quipped, you can watch the consultants departing for their jobs \u201clike bats leaving a cave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.blackopspartners.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/merlin_147347802-1024x658.jpg\")
Oligarchs and Autocrats<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Building China\u2019s Dream<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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A Special Relationship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Clients Under Sanctions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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McKinsey participated in a Saudi investment conference in October that included Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, onstage right, despite the recent killing and dismemberment of a dissident columnist by Saudi agents. Credit Tasneem Alsultan for The New York Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n