The McCain campaign wants to bury the story of McCain's 70th birthday bash held on board the yacht of a Russian aluminum tycoon in the Adriatic Sea. The party was held on August 29, 2006, and followed a congressional junket by McCain and five other GOP senators to the Republic of Georgia.
The host for McCain's yacht party off the coast of the Republic of Montenegro was, Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia's tycoons who made his billions in cornering Russia's aluminum market in the 1990s.
The 70th birthday bash was reportedly a promise of huge cash donations to McCain's forthcoming presidential campaign. The quid pro quo for Derpaska was that McCain and his top lobbyists were pushing the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) and its Airbus subsidiary to receive tthe lucrative US Air Force contract to replace the Air Force's fleet of refueling tankers. The reported source for the aluminum in the Airbus tanker aircraft is Deripaska's Russian Aluminum Company (RusAl).
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