My quest turned out to be less of an investigation and more of an eye-opening adventure into the intricacies of Russian public relations and how difficult to can be to obtain information — any kind of information — from the Russian representatives of multinational companies.
After two weeks of exchanges, some companies decided that they would not give a comment for this article. Chrysler "decided not to comment because it is a sensitive issue," while Novartis felt "this is not a matter of principle, so we have nothing to say." Citi and McKinsey offered no explanation for their refusal to comment. Xerox "preferred not to comment" and Natalia Luneva, director of corporate communications at Dutch bank ING, said she "did not want to comment on this."
The HR executive at Pfizer was sick when I first called. Later the press office said it "took the issue off the table." MasterCard initially said its HR executive was on a business trip and later that it had "realized that they did not have time for the question anyway."
В результате получилось не столько расследование, сколько захватывающее описание попыток нашего корреспондента добиться от российских представителей международных компаний более-менее внятных комментариев.
