I wonder if any YC companies have passed on Milner's generous investment offer due to these allegations?
Actually, it's probably a great idea to research any investor throughly before taking money. There's an incredible berth of information on how to create attractive companies for investment, but not so much on dating your investors.
Incidentally, the Start Fund is Yuri's private fund. It's not part of DST.
I think pg must be literally rofl with some of the stuff being posted re Yuri in recent times. Do think that HN also doubles up as some kind of comedy central carefully curated by wily partners. Information asymmetry ensures that some jokes are only understood by the chosen few.
Look at this " official " account http://twitter.com/#!/yurimilner for further insights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgcxGFmYyPs reflects yC quite well.
PG is Colonel Hogan of course.
When lots of money is involved some people turn a blind eye if it benefits them.
When lots of money is involved, smart people do not turn a blind eye, they just ensure that the fine-print on contracts are done in such a way that their house is safe.
I'm not sure you read the article; the point was not that That Yuri is a shady guy but rather that he is acting as a conduit for shady money from people who would be red flagged if they tried doing big things in the US.
Working on a startup starves one of normal social company, so the best I can do is to interact with random friends on HN.
Applying the argument for shady money, I'd have to warrant that we're already past the point of debate with other more strange anachronisms now extant in this game. The overall US debt is just the tip.