Over two years into the investigation of alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, a new picture has started to emerge, one of Russian oligarchs and their connections to some of the key figures responsible for the collusion narrative.
He obtained his wealth in a manner similar to that of many Russian oligarchs. In 1987, he founded Menatep, one of Russia’s first private banks. He used the bank to acquire stakes in companies that were being privatized at bargain-basement prices.
The funding for the purchase of Yukos appeared almost as suspect as the auction process:
“It was unclear where Khodorkovsky got the money to buy Yukos. He had various international political and financial connections and claimed that most of the money was borrowed from various sources. One former bank official stated that he was buying Yukos with the money Yukos had accumulated from not paying their taxes.”
The manner in which many acquisitions were made, known as “loans-for-shares,” was simple and effective. Banks, controlled by oligarchs like Khodorkovsky, would make loans to the government, taking assets, such as factories, for collateral. The banks would run the businesses until the loans were repaid by the government. If the government defaulted, the banks had the collateral. The loans were rarely repaid.
“To some extent, [President Donald] Trump is president of the alt-elite, not the mainstream elite,” Khodorkovsky said, before connecting the situation to Putin’s, who he said has targeted alternative elites around the world in influence operations. “He tries to be generous to them, to build relations with them.”
Khodorkovsky, who has many sympathetic supporters within the media, had a simple message for Trump:
“I would tell him that the current American administration has created a crisis of sorts in the heads of America and the whole world.”
Khodorkovsky noted that Trump’s victory was unanticipated within the Kremlin:
“If Putin had any objectives whatsoever vis-a-vis that election, it was that when Clinton won—and everybody in the Kremlin was convinced Clinton would win—to create a couple of nice visible incidents in the U.S. featuring Trump’s losing supporters accusing Clinton of dishonest elections,” he said. “Your FBI director had more impact on the election than Putin.”
He was referring to former FBI Director James Comey, who announced, days before the November vote, a renewed probe of then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured email server while she was secretary of state.
“I am almost convinced that Putin’s people have tried to influence the U.S. election in some way. That Putin personally tried to cooperate with the Trump campaign to affect the election is a 9 out of 10. Whether or not that proposal was accepted, I would let the people responsible for investigating the matter answer that question.”
Khodorkovsky, like most Russian oligarchs, has his own ties to figures in the Trump–Russia narrative. His former head of human resources, Sergey Gorkov, met Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in New York in December 2017—a meeting that was used to push allegations of Russian ties.
During the interview, Khodorkovsky was careful to mention he believed that Gorkov met with Kushner on orders from either Andrey Kostin or Herman Gref. Both men run Kremlin-backed banks that were sanctioned by the Obama administration. Notably, the two bankers Khodorkovsky cited have been publicly linked to Trump.
Gref co-organized a 2013 dinner in Moscow for Trump to meet Russian businessmen. Aras Agalarov, Gref’s partner, was directly involved in “offering dirt on Hillary Clinton” to Donald Trump Jr. during the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. Kostin was named by Felix Sater, a former FBI informant, as a potential source of funding for a Trump Tower project in Moscow.
According to the article, Khodorkovsky’s aides said this was “the first time he has shared these details about Gorkov.”
“[Putin] does not run Russia outside the inner beltway of Moscow,” he said. “The pact that he has with those people who actually do run the various regions of the country is a rather simple one: You bring out the level of vote that I need for my purposes, and I let you do what you want to do in your region. That’s how it works.”
Magnitsky Act
Khodorkovsky operates a project he has dubbed Dossier Center, which receives anonymous leaks to share with journalists. Unlike WikiLeaks, Khodorkovsky’s focus is more specific:“Our ambition is not simply to expose information in general, but to use material relating to Putin’s circle and his allies so that they can be put on trial in Russia.”
Browder is the founder of Hermitage Capital Management and was active in Russia during the privatization boom. He has been portrayed by some as a human rights activist, while others have darker views of his activities. He is wanted by Russian authorities in regard to several tax cases and claims of financial fraud.
Unsurprisingly, Khodorkovsky and Browder have both been supporters of the Magnitsky Act, which has directly targeted their political enemies and provided a shield from Russian retaliation for themselves.
“When Browder consulted me, he wanted to know what he could do to hold those involved in the case accountable. ... I suggested creating a new law to impose economic and travel sanctions on human-rights violators involved in grand corruption. Browder decided this could secure a measure of justice for Magnitsky. He initiated a campaign that led to the enactment of the Magnitsky Act. Soon other countries enacted their own Magnitsky Acts, including Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and most recently, the United Kingdom.”
Russian authorities are still pursuing a case against Browder. As Winer notes, the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty allows Russian prosecutors to ask the U.S. Attorney General to arrange for Americans to testify in criminal cases—with one significant exception, as noted by Winer:
“The attorney general can provide no such assistance in a politically motivated case. I know this because I was among those who helped put it there. Back in 1999, when we were negotiating the agreement with Russia, I was the senior State Department official managing U.S.–Russia law-enforcement relations.”
“APCO was paid $3 million in 2010 and 2011 to work for Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear company. Rosatom paid APCO to lobby the State Department and other federal agencies on behalf of its Tenex subsidiary, which sought to increase its commercial uranium sales in the United States.”
Johnstone observes that APCO’s president and CEO, Margery Krause, is “a member of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s son Pavel’s Institute of Modern Russia, devoted to ‘promoting democratic values’—in other words, to building political opposition to Vladimir Putin.”
In some respects, the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting virtually ensured that the Magnitsky Act will remain in force. That one event accomplished more than Browder or Khodorkovsky could have accomplished in years of lobbying. The Trump Tower meeting rendered the Magnitsky Act politically untouchable in the intermediate term. In August 2017, Trump placed additional sanctions on Russia.
Kramer and McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia, have both been frequently quoted in The Washington Post and The New York Times criticizing Trump’s foreign policy. Kramer, at late Sen. John McCain’s behest, flew to London to meet with Steele. Kramer then hand-delivered the Steele dossier to McCain, who gave a copy to Comey.
At this point, it remains unknown whether Khodorkovsky or Browder have involvement, direct or otherwise, in the production of the Steele dossier. A common link between the participants is Jonathan Winer, who has known Steele for years. Winer lobbied on behalf of Khodorkovsky and the Corbiere Trust. Given Khodorkovsky’s focus on passage of the Magnitsky Act, a link to Browder is a short hop at best.
“In the summer of 2016, Steele told me that he had learned of disturbing information regarding possible ties between Donald Trump, his campaign and senior Russian officials.
“In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the ‘dossier.’ Steele’s sources suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign.
