Still sounds like a threat to me.
Maybe it’s just bad english, or an unfortunate way of putting something, but taken literally it is threatening consequences at other programs – which he points out he knows people at, if R quits cpays.
It’s the combination of saying that he knows people there and that bad things will happen IF R quits Cpays.
Obviously it can be taken one way or another, as seen by the posts above.
So I’ll bow to the general consensus, but I can totally understand how R interpreted this as a threat.