Trump adviser’s Russian contact closely linked to Putin family
New questions over meeting between Erik Prince and financier with direct ties to Russian president
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Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater security group, met Kirill Dmitriev, whose wife is close friends with Vladimir Putin's daughter © EPA
Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater private security group and a close campaign adviser to Donald Trump, met a Russian financier with direct ties to Vladimir Putin's family in the weeks leading up to Mr Trump's inauguration, according to multiple people briefed on the talks.
Although Mr Prince's meeting with Kirill Dmitriev in the Seychelles, which is being examined by special counsel Robert Mueller, has been previously disclosed,
Mr Dmitriev's ties to the Putin clan have not been widely known. According to six people close to Mr Dmitriev, his wife is close friends with Mr Putin’s younger daughter.
The close links to Mr Putin's family are likely to raise new questions about whether Mr Prince was seeking a back-door communications route to the Kremlin on behalf of Mr Trump following earlier press reports that Mr Mueller was pursuing this line of inquiry.
Mr Dmitriev’s wife Natalia Popova was in the same year at Moscow State University as Yekaterina Tikhonova, Mr Putin’s younger daughter, and is the deputy director of her technology foundation, Innopraktika.
Ms Popova’s close friendship with Ms Tikhonova helped secure Mr Dmitriev’s job running the Kremlin’s $10bn Russia Direct investment Fund and has made him a powerful figure in the Kremlin, according to three people who work with Mr Dmitriev, a state banker, a fellow private equity executive and a person who knows him socially.
Mr Dmitriev is a member of Innopraktika’s board and a former board member of petrochemicals giant Sibur, where Ms Tikhonova’s husband Kirill Shamalov is a senior executive. RDIF gave Sibur a $1.75bn loan in 2015, when Mr Shamalov owned 21.4 per cent of its stock. (He reduced his share to 3.9 per cent in 2017.)
Mr Dmitriev regularly attends Ms Tikhonova’s performances in acrobatic rock and roll dancing alongside Mr Shamalov, according to the parent of another contestant.
Mr Mueller wants to determine whether Mr Prince — whose sister is US education secretary Betsy DeVos — was attempting to negotiate a back-channel with the Kremlin on behalf of the incoming Trump administration at their meeting in January 2017, according to reports in the New York Times and Washington Post. The emergence of close links to the family adds weight to that line of inquiry. Mr Dmitriev “rose to the top because he is part of the family,” a person who works on deals with RDIF said.
George Nader, an adviser to Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nayhan, the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates, has told Mr Mueller’s team that Mr bin Zayed set up the meeting between the two men as a way to discuss US-Russia relations informally, the newspapers reported earlier this month. Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala state investment company has a $2bn joint fund with RDIF that has invested in strategic Russian businesses. Mr Prince told congressional investigators in November that he met Mr Dmitriev by chance while discussing other deals with UAE officials in the Seychelles and left after drinking one beer.
Mr Dmitriev, who has degrees from Stanford and Harvard universities, was appointed to run RDIF when the Kremlin set it up in 2011 as an attempt to attract more foreign private equity investment in Russia.
His marriage to Ms Popova appears to have helped him secure the job after the preferred candidate dropped out when he refused to give up his French passport, three of the people said. Unlike most sovereign wealth funds, RDIF focuses on partnering with foreign investors to invest in Russian companies. The fund has mostly worked with Middle Eastern and Asian investors since it was placed under US sanctions in 2014. Mr Prince has declined to comment. Mr Dmitriev has not responded to requests for comment.
Last year, Ms Popova presented documentaries on state television about Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia in which she interviewed Mr Dmitriev’s business partners, officials who praised RDIF’s work with Middle Eastern investors, and Mr Dmitriev himself. The films were produced by a company owned by Arkady Rotenberg, Mr Putin’s childhood judo sparring partner.
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