David Vitter had reason to celebrate when his former colleagues in the U.S. Senate ensured that sanctions against Oleg Deripaska's companies would be lifted.

Deripaska, an old ally of Vladimir Putin, is a plutocrat who has repeatedly been denied a visa to enter the United States because his rise to the top of the business world allegedly owed much to mobsters. He was the richest man in Russia, and the ninth richest in the world, until the financial disasters of 2008, but still has enough billions to qualify as a “Russian oligarch.” His principal holdings are a company called En+, parent of Rusal, a dominant force in the aluminum market.

Mercury Public Affairs, the lobbying company where Vitter has worked since quitting the Senate, has been paid around $100,000 a month since May to get Deripaska's companies back in favor.

The law said Vitter could not lobby senators until Jan. 3, two years after he had left their ranks, and nobody doubts that such “revolving door” restrictions are scrupulously observed. But maybe the Russians figured residual goodwill would make Vitter a useful hire.

Not much was required to tip the balance. After the House overwhelmingly refused to let the Russian companies off the hook, it was a narrow squeak in the Senate, where 60 votes were required to block Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's plan to lift the sanctions. Mnuchin was cleared to go ahead by a margin of three votes.

Among the GOP senators who defected and voted to keep sanctions in place was John Kennedy, who holds the seat that Vitter gave up in 2017 after getting whopped in the governor's race. Deripaska had reduced his official stake in the aluminum companies as a condition of relief from sanctions, but it takes a bold man to trust a Russian oligarch. Kennedy was not inclined to trust this one, pointing out, “You don't have to own the majority of the stock to have influence over the people of the company."

Announcing the sanctions, which forbade Americans to do business with his companies, the Treasury explained last year that Deripaska allegedly “bribed a government official, ordered the murder of a businessman, and had links to a Russian organized crime." Even senators who voted to lift the sanctions were under no illusions about Deripaska's character. One of them, James Lankford of Oklahoma, called him a “scoundrel,” which may be an understatement, considering that Deripaska emerged a winner from the bloody battle for control of Russian commerce after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

That makes Deripaska Donald Trump's kinda guy; a president who lavishes praise on Putin and North Korean dictator President Kim Jong-Un will have no desire to punish an oligarch.

Trump may, in any case, have felt obliged to Deripaska, one of whose alleged offenses was assisting Russian schemes to interfere with the American presidential election. Trump would never admit it publicly, but he must figure he may well have lost without Russian help. Vitter was indirectly beholden to the Russians too, since his wife Wendy became Trump's pick for a district judgeship in New Orleans.

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Although Vitter has only recently been allowed to lobby congressmen, he always had free rein to woo the administration on Deripaska's behalf, which would hardly rank as one of K Street's toughest challenges. En+ must have been the ideal client for Vitter; his heart was in the work, what there was of it, and the pay was evidently fabulous.

The contract with Mercury was signed in May last year by Lord Barker of Battle, who was appointed chairman of En+ in 2017. Barker is an English life peer with an apparent weakness for Russian oligarchs, having earlier worked for Roman Abramovich, known to soccer fans as owner of the English Premier League's Chelsea. When Mercury and Vitter were hired, Deripaska and Abramovich were fighting it out in London's High Court over ownership of a mining company.

The Standards Commissioner is currently investigating Barker for an alleged breach of the House of Lords Code of Conduct “in relation to personal honour, parliamentary services and paid advocacy.”

Lobbying work can sure mean associating with dubious characters, but then senators-turned-lobbyists are sometimes compared to prostitutes. Vitter can take it.

Email James Gill at Gill1407@bellsouth.net.