I doubt that Izmirlian knew how to protect himself when working with a construction company - the problem here is that he failed to protect himself from the obvious conflict of interest, where the company providing him money pushed him into choosing a contractor with strong ties to them.

Now that I think about it, this is just like your VC pushing you to spend money on, and join your technical stack at the hip with a service provided by another startup... Funded by that same VC.

But I'm sure that all the problems were caused by the fact that he was dealing with state-owned enterprises. These kinds of shenanigans never happen between private parties, and this is not at all a hit piece.