I dont understand how you buy the seat or buy the person etc etc or if exxon bought yukos then mobil would have seats in the Dumas. the Japanese in 1998 controlled 28% of all the US treasury bonds in the world. but they did not control the economy of the US.
Over 30% of all US businesses are foreign owned. maybe they do control the economy , who knows: We cant even manufacture the steel for an Abrams tank in the US because our economy has bankrupted all the big steel stamping plants and I think that this is a problem
the whole point for a legislature is that it is composed of multiple competing interests. For every congressman that is bought by an Oil company there is one that fights for gay rights.
I do not think that giving money to the Dumas makes it into your baby. If the entire Russian system is so weak that having an American corporation own part of their economy that they had to jail the owner of a company, like the FBI jailing Gates because his software was on too many govt computers, then Russia can not survive.
My guess is that it was done for other reasons, more sinister or more vacuous than we will know