Viktor Vekselberg is a pro-Putin Ukrainian oligarch worth $13 billion. Through his company Renova, he holds a 5.5% stake in Bank of Cyprus, where Wilbur Ross served as vice chairman of the board until his confirmation as US commerce secretary.
2/ In September, 2016, Putin paid Vekselberg a “courtesy call”. reuters.com/article/us-rus…
3/ In January, Senator Feinstein sent a series of letters to various individuals requesting information about Trump-Russia. Her letter to Caputo requested “all communications concerning Vekselberg relating to Deripaska.” (feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/…) 
4/ Vekselberg and Deripaska had a falling out recently. It is not beyond Deripaska to leak damaging information about his enemies. (metalbulletin.com/Article/299562…)
5/ Unlike Deripaska, Vekselberg rejected an offer of citizenship from Cyprus. en.crimerussia.com/oligarchs/oleg…
6/ FBI agents asked Vekselberg about payments his company's American affiliate, Columbus Nova, made to Cohen. He was questioned also about $300,000 in political donations by Andrew Intrater, Vekselberg's American cousin who is the head of Columbus Nova. cnn.com/2018/05/08/pol…
7/ Vekselberg recently increased his share to 26.5% in the aluminum firm Rusal, which was owned by Deripaska. Two of Vekselberg’s US partners donated more than $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. amp.slate.com/news-and-polit…
8/ Here is a good article which details the recent litigation between Deripaska and Vekselberg. It involves a Glencore contract and, clearly, Vekselberg was making a play for Deripaska’s company. johnhelmer.net/smoke-and-mirr…
9/ In March 2017, just two months after Columbus Nova’s payments to Cohen began, Vekselberg met publicly w Putin to discuss infrastructure projects in Russia that his holding company, Renova Group, was working on. news.vice.com/en_us/article/…
10/ Vekselberg was at the 2015 dinner held by Russian state-run news outlet RT in Moscow, attended by Flynn and Jill Stein. nbcnews.com/news/world/gue…
11/ On January 6—the day the US intelligence community reported that Putin had approved a covert operation to subvert the presidential campaign to assist Trump—Andrew Intrater (see paragraph 6, above) donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund. publicintegrity.org/2016/11/29/204…
12/ Intrater’s hefty gift to the inauguration fund earned him special access to inaugural events, including a dinner billed as “an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,” according to a fundraising brochure obtained by the Center for Public Integrity. (Id).
13/ Vekselberg has faced accusations of corruption. One lawsuit claimed he used gunmen to gain control of a Siberian oil field. #RussianMob bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
14/ As I reported in my Deutsche Bank money laundering thread last November, during Wilbur Ross’ confirmation hearings, Democratic senators sent Ross a list of questions regarding his relationship with Vekselberg. Ross has yet to answer them.
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15/ During the 2016 election, the Trump campaign blasted Hillary Clinton for a link with Vekselberg because the Renova Group had donated between $50,000 an $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. 🙄🙄🙄 motherjones.com/politics/2016/…
16/ Trump issued a press release claiming this contribution was evidence Clinton was the candidate in the race w “close ties” to Putin & had “sold out American interests to Putin in exchange for political & financial favors.” (That press release is no longer available online.) 🙄
17/ In 2015, David Bossie, who served as deputy campaign manager for Trump, hypocritically said the CF connection to Vekselberg was “just another example of how the Clintons will take money from any source, good, bad, or ugly.” 🙄🙄🙄nationalreview.com/2015/09/clinto…
18/ Waiting for Bossie’s statement and a Trump press release about Intrater’s $250K donation—Also, Alexander Shustorovich and Access Industries, owned by Len Blavatnik, and Vekselberg longtime business partner, each gave $1 million to finance Trump’s inauguration.
19/ Novartis calls $1.2 million deal with Trump lawyer's firm a 'mistake' reuters.com/article/us-usa…
20/ Additional contributions from Russian-connected donors came from Russian-born oil executive Simon Kukes Neither Kukes nor Intrater had an appreciable record of political contributions until last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
21/ After Trump secured the nomination, Kukes gave $280,000 to an assortment of Trump-controlled funds over the next several months. Intrater contributed $35,000 to the Trump Victory committee, plus $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund.
22/ Here is Putin with Deripaska and Vekselberg.
23/ Vekselberg is reported to hold frequent meetings with Putin as part of a business group known as the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
24/ Vekselberg also oversaw fundraising for the Moscow Jewish Museum, including hosting a 2014 gala in Russia attended by Ivanka and Jared. Blavatnik also attended the event. (I am still looking for a photo of this event).
25/ Ivanka attended the Moscow Jewish Museum fundraiser on this trip in February 2014. Here she is w Abramovich wife, Zhukova, Wendi Deng. Other photos from the trip show Kushner was also present in Russia at the time. instagram.com/p/kBmFGdCkP4/?…
26/ Ivanka and Jared sat with the VIP’s of the event hosted by Abramovich. Among the guests were Vekselberg; Blavatnik; Alexey Reznikovich, the head of LetterOne Technology, which is controlled by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman;
27/ and Ekaterina Vinokurova, daughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with her husband Alexander Vinokurov, who sits on the board of Alfa Group. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
28/ An aside: I reported way back in April, 2017, in my thread about Cambridge Analytica and the Mercers, that Fridman was a significant piece of the puzzle. Now we know that in 2014, Jared & Ivanka were socializing w Fridman in Moscow:
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29/ SEC filings prove Vekselberg’s influence:
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30/ 💥Mueller probing donations with foreign connections to Trump inauguration💥 abcnews.go.com/Politics/exclu…
31/ More damaging information about Vekselberg:
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32/ Now, this is interesting. In early 2016, Vekselberg bought part of Gawker. fortune.com/2016/01/20/gaw…
33/ Shortly after Vekselberg purchased Gawker, on June 15, 2016, just 6-days after the Don Jr Trump Tower meeting, Gawker published hacked DNC opposition research that Gawker was given by Guccifer 2.0. This was the first leak of DNC hacked data. gawker.com/this-looks-lik…
34/ What is most interesting is that none of the DNC opposition research at that time referenced or contained any of the information that Christopher Steel would later reveal in his dossier. This supports that the #SteeleDossier findings were not concocted by the DNC.
35/ On June 10, 2016, the DNC met with its IT vendor to investigate. On June 14, DNC went public that DNC computers had been compromised by Russian state-backed hackers. Up until this time, the hacked data had not been posted. Vekselberg’s Gawker was first to publish.
36/ In late June, after Gawker published, Guccifer 2.0 directed reporters to the newly launched DCLeaks site. WikiLeaks joined the fray on July 22, 2016. The first document Guccifer 2.0 published to DCLeaks was on June 15 (same date Gawker published), from Podesta's inbox.
37/ DCLeaks is a website that was established in June 2016. Cybersecurity research firms say the site is a front for the Russian cyber-espionage group Fancy Bear. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCLeaks
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