McCain has some interesting friends.
Later that month, Deripaska wrote to Davis and his partner, GOP political consultant Paul J. Manafort, to thank them for arranging the meeting. "Thank you so much for setting up everything in Klosters so spectacularly," he wrote. "It was very interesting to meet Senators McCain, Chambliss and Sununu in such an intimate setting."
The letter went on to mention a business deal that Deripaska and the consultants had apparently been talking about. "Please will you send me the information on the metals trading company we discussed and would be happy to see if I can do anything to help," Deripaska wrote.
The letter was sent to Davis at the Reform Institute, a Virginia-based nonprofit group that McCain helped start to promote many of his trademark reform efforts, including increasing the transparency of lobbying and campaign financing.
Davis was the institute's president from January 2003 until December 2005. During that time, he was also a registered lobbyist at Davis Manafort. The institute was located at the Davis Manafort offices until January 2006.
Seven months later, in August 2006, Davis was present again at a social gathering that was also attended by McCain and Deripaska, this time in Montenegro, another Eastern European country in which Davis's firm was working. The three were among a few dozen people dining at a restaurant during an official Senate trip.
Davis was a paid consultant to the governing party in Montenegro and had advised it on a just-ratified independence referendum, Salter said. That was why he was at the dinner, he added.
Afterward, a group from the dinner took boats out to a nearby yacht moored in the Adriatic Sea, where champagne and pastries were served, partly in honor of McCain's 70th birthday.
Salter said neither McCain nor Davis recalls Deripaska being on the yacht after dinner.
http:// www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/24/AR2008012403383_pf.html