From PandoDaily:
A longtime senior executive in eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s global impact fund, Jayant Sinha, has been appointed to Indian ultranationalist leader Narendra Modi’s council of ministers.
In 2009, Sinha established Omidyar Network India Advisors and served as partner and managing director in the First Look Media publisher’s impact fund. Sinha also served on Omidyar Network’s five-member global Executive Committee, and steered well over $100 million of Omidyar Network funds into India, making it the most active single-country investment for the $700 million impact fund, the world’s largest impact fund. Earlier this year, Sinha stepped down as partner and managing director at Omidyar Network to run for his father’s seat in India’s parliament on the far-right BJP Party ticket.
https://twitter.com/OmidyarNetwork/status/467352544814305280
Sinha’s appointment to Modi’s cabinet makes him the second high-profile Omidyar figure to rise to power in a right-wing, pro-business government in the last two weeks. In late October, PandoDaily reported that Svitlana Zalishchuk — whose Ukrainian NGO “New Citizen” received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Omidyar and USAID, and took credit for organizing the Maidan revolution — took a seat in Ukraine’s new parliament, on the party ticket of billionaire president Petro Poroshenko. Since coming to power after the February “revolution,” Poroshenko led Ukraine into a bloody and disastrous offensive campaign against Russia-backed separatists in the east of the country, leaving thousands dead. Human Rights Watch has accused Poroshenko of committing potential war crimes by using cluster bombs “indiscriminately in populated areas.”
As PandoDaily has been reporting all year, Jayant Sinha—and his boss, Omidyar—have been playing an unusual dual role in Indian politics over the past few years, conflating supposedly philanthropic activities with decidedly political investments that dovetailed with Sinha’s party’s political campaign when it was out of power....MORE
