Getty Viktor Vekselberg
Viktor Vekselberg is a billionaire Russian oligarch, aluminum baron and faberge egg collector who is the subject of new accusations focusing on President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
The Daily Beast reported that it can allegedly confirm that Cohen “received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company controlled by Putin-aligned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.” That report came after the attorney for porn star Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti, alleged on Twitter, “After significant investigation, we have discovered that Mr. Trump’s atty Mr. Cohen received approximately $500,000 in the mos. after the election from a company controlled by a Russian Oligarch with close ties to Mr. Putin. These monies may have reimbursed the $130k payment.”
It has not been confirmed, though, what the money was used for, if the payment reports are indeed accurate. Who is Viktor Vekselberg?
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Avenatti Released a Dossier of His Own That Made Further Allegations
GettyMichael Cohen, a personal attorney for President Trump, departs from a House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill
In a preliminary report he posted on the Internet, Avenatti focused on the $130,000 payment that Cohen made to Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
“Within approximately 75 days of the payment to Ms. Clifford, Mr. Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian Oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, caused substantial funds to be deposited into the bank account from which Mr. Cohen made the payment,” the report alleges. “It appears that these funds may have replenished the account following the payment to Ms. Clifford.”
The latter is unproven. The Avenatti document further alleges that Vekselberg, “a Russian Oligarch with an estimated net worth of nearly $13 Billion” and his cousin Mr. Andrew Intrater “routed eight payments to Mr. Cohen through a company named Columbus Nova LLC (“Columbus”) beginning in January 2017 and continuing until at least August 2017.”
The document further contends, “Columbus Nova is a private equity firm founded in 2000 with over $2 billion in assets. Mr. Intrater is the CEO of Columbus Nova. Columbus Nova is the U.S. investment vehicle for Renova Group, a multi-nationalcompany controlled by Mr. Vekselberg. Renova groupholdsinvestments in various interests, including mining, oil, and telecommunications.”
Columbus Nova released a statement denying the information. “Columbus Nova is a management company solely owned and controlled by Americans,” the statement read. “After the inauguration, the firm hired Michael Cohen as a business consultant regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures. Reports today that Viktor Vekselberg used Columbus Nova as a conduit for payments to Michael Cohen are false. The claim that Viktor Vekselberg was involved or provided any funding for Columbus Nova’s engagement of Michael Cohen is patently untrue. Neither Viktor Vekselberg nor anyone else other than Columbus Nova’s owners, were involved in the decision to hire Cohen or provided funding for his engagement.”
You can read the rest of the Avenatti document in full here. It’s not clear how Avenatti obtained the information.
2. Mueller’s Team Previously Interviewed Vekselberg & Vekselberg Attended Trump’s Inauguration, Reports Say
GettyRussian President Vladimir Putin (2nd L), accompanied by Alexander Boroda (L), head of the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities and the museums director, businessman Viktor Vekselberg (2nd R) and Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar, stands by the stone of the memorial to members of the resistance at Nazis concentration camps during World War Two, at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre as part of International Holocaust Victims Remembrance Day, in Moscow on January 29, 2018.
It had already been reported that Vekselberg was questioned in connection with the Robert Mueller probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The oligarch attended Donald Trump’s inauguration.
According to CNN, the questions revolved around “about hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments his company’s US affiliate made to President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, after the election.”
Mueller’s investigators stopped Vekselberg and another oligarch “earlier this year after their private jets landed in New York-area airports,” CNN reported. The network reported that Mueller’s team was also interested in hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations made by Intrater.
Michael Cohen’s attorney, Steve Ryan, won’t discuss the $500,000 Michael Avenatti says Cohen received from Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg in 2017. “I understand the shorthand you’re using, but it wasn’t a payment,” Ryan says before hanging up.
Intrater’s cash went to support the Donald Trump inauguration fund, Trump Victory Fund, and Republican National Committes, according to CNN. Vekselberg’s electronic devices were searched.
3. Vekselberg Was Among a Group of Oligarchs Recently Sanctioned by the Treasury Department
Viktor Vekselberg
Vekselberg and another Russian oligarch with ties to Paul Manafort, Oleg Deripaska, were hit with sanctions by the U.S government in April 2018.
In a press release announcing the sanctions, the U.S. Treasury Department wrote, “The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), in consultation with the Department of State, today designated seven Russian oligarchs and 12 companies they own or control, 17 senior Russian government officials, and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank.”
The Russian government “operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin in the release. “The Russian government engages in a range of malign activity around the globe, including continuing to occupy Crimea and instigate violence in eastern Ukraine, supplying the Assad regime with material and weaponry as they bomb their own civilians, attempting to subvert Western democracies, and malicious cyber activities. Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities.”
The release states of Vekselberg, “Viktor Vekselberg is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy. Vekselberg is the founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Renova Group. The Renova Group is comprised of asset management companies and investment funds that own and manage assets in several sectors of the Russian economy, including energy. In 2016, Russian prosecutors raided Renova’s offices and arrested two associates of Vekselberg, including the company’s chief managing director and another top executive, for bribing officials connected to a power generation project in Russia.”
4. Vekselberg Became Rich Selling Scrap Copper & Has a Large Faberge Egg Fortune
In this handout image provided by Host Photo Agency, President of the Skolkovo Foundation Viktor Vekselberg attends a meeting with Business 20 and Labour 20 representatives at the G20 Summit on September 6, 2013 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Forbes Magazine reports that Vekselberg is the wealthiest of the sanctioned oligarchs. “Vekselberg made his first million selling scrap copper from worn-out cables. He owns a large art collection, including 9 Faberge eggs he bought from the Forbes family (shareholders of Forbes magazine) for a reported $100 million,” Forbes reported.
According to CNN, Vekselberg once spent “$100 million to buy nine Faberge eggs from the American Forbes family, returning the second-largest collection of imperial eggs to Russia.”
Vekselberg’s net worth exceeds $13 billion. “For me, being rich means being responsible first and foremost. Money is hard to earn, but it is even harder to manage it correctly,” Forbes Magazine quoted him as saying.
According to Forbes, Vekselberg was born in the Ukraine and “made his first million selling scrap copper from worn-out cables. Vekselberg later bought several medium-size aluminum smelters and bauxite mines and united them into Sual Holding in 1996. Eleven years later, he merged it with billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Russian Aluminum to form UC Rusal.” His largest asset today is “an investment in Swiss company Sulzer, which produces pumping equipment for industrial companies,” Forbes reports.
“Born in western Ukraine, he trained as an engineer and went into business in 1990, in the dying months of the Soviet Union,” The Guardian reported. According to The Moscow Times, “As a young engineer in the late 1980s, Viktor Vekselberg showed initiative and was well-liked by co-workers at the Moscow-based company where he helped develop equipment for oil exploration.”
His father was Jewish and his mother Christian.
5. Vekselberg ‘Nominally’ Resides in Switzerland, Is Married & Once Described Himself as Half American
Viktor Vekselberg, Chairman of Renova Group and President of SKOLKOVO Foundation, attends the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on June 16, 2011 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Vekselberg “nominally resides in Switzerland for tax purposes, but travels the world extensively, and calls himself a world citizen,” according to Swissinfo.ch.
He has denied alleged ties to Vladimir Putin. “We are confronted in Switzerland with comments that Renova is in the hands of the Kremlin. My meetings with the president have been understood as me receiving instructions,” Vekselberg told the Swiss Economic Forum in 2008. “This is just total nonsense. Our investments in Swiss products have nothing to do with the Russian government or Russian state capital.” He previously offered “modest criticism” of the Russian government’s handling of an economic crisis.
Viktor Vekselberg is married and has two children. According to The Guardian, he described himself as “half-American” because his wife, Marina, their son, and their daughter are United States citizens.
“Vekselberg has an adult daughter and a son. His wife, Marina Dobrynina, chairs the Dobry Vek charity for people with mental disorders,” Moscow Times reported, adding that Vekselberg enjoys reading, especially the writings of the poet Boris Pasternak.