{"id":41926,"date":"2017-08-21T05:11:28","date_gmt":"2017-08-21T05:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=41926"},"modified":"2017-08-21T05:11:28","modified_gmt":"2017-08-21T05:11:28","slug":"lobbyist-at-trump-campaign-meeting-has-a-web-of-russian-connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/lobbyist-at-trump-campaign-meeting-has-a-web-of-russian-connections.html","title":{"rendered":"Lobbyist at Trump Campaign Meeting Has a Web of Russian Connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lobbyist at Trump Campaign Meeting Has a Web of Russian Connections<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian immigrant who met last summer with senior Trump campaign officials, has often struck colleagues as a classic Washington mercenary \u2014 loyal to his wife, his daughter and his bank account. He avoided work that would antagonize Moscow, they suggested, only because he profited from his reputation as a man with valuable connections there.<\/span><\/p>\n

But interviews with his associates and documents reviewed by The New York Times indicate that Mr. Akhmetshin, who is under scrutiny by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, has much deeper ties to the Russian government and Kremlin-backed oligarchs than previously known.<\/span><\/p>\n

He has an association with a former deputy head of a Russian spy service, the F.S.B., and a history of working for close allies of President Vladimir V. Putin. Twice, he has worked on legal battles for Russian tycoons whose opponents suffered sophisticated hacking attacks, arousing allegations of computer espionage. He helped federal prosecutors bring corruption charges against an American businessman in the former Soviet Union who turned out to be working for the C.I.A.<\/span><\/p>\n

He also helped expose possible corruption in government contracting that complicated American efforts to keep troops at an air base in Kyrgyzstan \u2014 an American presence that the Russians fiercely opposed.<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, Mr. Akhmetshin\u2019s projects over two decades in Washington routinely advanced the Kremlin\u2019s interests, especially after he became an American citizen in 2009. American counterintelligence agents took notice of his activities, but drew no conclusions about where his allegiances lay, according to a former law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing government secrecy rules.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Akhmetshin\u2019s meeting with Trump campaign officials is of keen interest to Mr. Mueller, who is investigating the Kremlin\u2019s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. Of all the visitors who attended the June 2016 session at the Trump Tower, he appears to have the most direct ties to Russian intelligence. The session was arranged by a Russian businessman close to Mr. Putin whose emissary promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton as \u201cpart of Russia and its government\u2019s support for Mr. Trump.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Akhmetshin, who did not respond to repeated requests to be interviewed for this article, has said he was a last-minute guest at an inconsequential get-together. Trump campaign officials have dismissed the meeting as part of an effort to amend an American law that placed sanctions on Russians for human rights abuses. The 2012 law, known as the Magnitsky Act, infuriated Mr. Putin, whose government retaliated by restricting adoptions of Russian children by Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ronald J. McNamara, a former staff member of the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe who met with Mr. Akhmetshin about Central Asian issues, said Mr. Akhmetshin openly alluded to involvement with Russian intelligence. \u201cMy understanding was that he had come from the security agencies in the Soviet Union-Russian Federation,\u201d Mr. McNamara said. \u201cHe did not make it a secret.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Akhmetshin, 49, said he is no Russian spy. \u201cI am the target of a well-coordinated and financed smear campaign,\u201d he said last month in a text message to The Times.<\/span><\/p>\n

Keenly intelligent, relentlessly charming and assiduously opaque about his work, Mr. Akhmetshin sometimes referred to his contacts by pseudonyms and collected his salary in stacks of hundred-dollar bills. A trained biochemist who speaks four languages, he described himself on one official document as a \u201chousehusband. \u201d He identified himself as the head of a Washington think tank for years after it was officially dissolved.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think he works for us. I don\u2019t think he works for them,\u201d said Lanny Wiles, a veteran Republican political operative who has worked with Mr. Akhmetshin for more than 15 years. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know what he really does.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rise of an Influence Peddler<\/span><\/p>\n

Born in Kazan, Russia, about 500 miles west of Moscow, Rinat Rafkatovitch Akhmetshin was drafted at age 18 into the Soviet army\u2019s war against Afghanistan. He served from 1986 to 1988 and again in 1991. He described himself on his visa application for the United States as a sergeant who rose to the rank of lieutenant in the military police, specializing in communications. He told some journalists that he worked with a military counterintelligence unit, but said he never joined Russian intelligence services \u2014 unlike his father, sister and godfather.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1992 he graduated with honors from Kazan Federal University, and two years later arrived in Washington as a graduate student in chemistry at the Catholic University of America. He married a fellow Russian chemistry student and received his Ph.D. But he immediately abandoned his esoteric study of mechanistic enzymes and burrowed into Washington\u2019s foreign lobbying scene, promoting clients from Russia and former Soviet states.<\/span><\/p>\n

He never formally studied English, he said, or owned a car: He pedaled about Washington on a bright orange bicycle. But he was witty and erudite, a lover of literature, opera and snowboarding. Matthew Bryza, a former staff member in charge of Central Asia issues at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, remembers Mr. Akhmetshin as \u201cvery smart, slick guy\u201d serving as \u201cthe paid drone of unsavory, out-of-fashion former Soviet leaders looking to launder their reputations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe would boast about ties and experience in Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence to give himself some cachet and make himself a mystery man,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Akhmetshin\u2019s gateway to Washington was Edward Lieberman, a lawyer with corporate and political clients in former Soviet countries who was married to President Bill Clinton\u2019s former deputy chief of staff, Evelyn S. Lieberman, who died in 2015. He called Mr. Lieberman, who could not be reached for comment, a personal adviser.<\/span><\/p>\n

Together the two started the Eurasian Institute for Economic and Political Research. Supposedly set up to promote democratic reforms in former Soviet states, it was essentially a vehicle to burnish the reputation of one client, Akezhan Kazhegeldin, an ex-K.G.B. officer and the former prime minister of Kazakhstan. Mr. Kazhegeldin had fled under a cloud of corruption charges and was seeking Washington\u2019s support to challenge his rival, Kazakhstan\u2019s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Akhmetshin worked to undercut his client\u2019s rival by funneling information to American prosecutors pursuing bribery charges against James Giffen, an American businessman close to the Kazakh president, according to people involved with the case. The prosecutors discovered only belatedly that Mr. Giffen had worked for the C.I.A. in the former Soviet Union.<\/span><\/p>\n

By 2005 the government of another former Soviet republic, Kyrgyzstan, had hired Mr. Akhmetshin to investigate whether Washington had bribed the family of the country\u2019s former president to keep an American air base there. The Manas base, established as a staging ground for American forces in Afghanistan, was a major source of friction with the Russians.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Kyrgyz ambassador to Washington at the time, Zamira Sydykova, said Mr. Akhmetshin arranged an interview with a Times reporter and escorted her to it. The resulting article helped set off a Washington controversy and ultimately, a congressional investigation. Kyrgyzstan finally forced the United States to abandon the base in 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an affidavit that year, Mr. Akhmetshin said he worked closely with the American government about the location of the base. But Thomas Graham, the National Security Council\u2019s Russia specialist from 2002 to 2007, said the controversy put Washington on the defensive. \u201cLooking into allegations of fraud or bribery \u2014 anything that would complicate our presence at that air base \u2014 was in Russia\u2019s interests,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Akhmetshin\u2019s work took him back and forth to Europe more than once a month, on trips lasting a few days each. Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is now chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has sought to determine whether his travel pattern raised concerns among immigration officials who approved Mr. Akhmetshin\u2019s application for American citizenship in 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once naturalized, Mr. Akhmetshin began traveling regularly to Moscow and taking on more overtly pro-Russian projects. The new work led him into legal entanglements, the halls of Congress and eventually Trump Tower.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Hacking Campaigns<\/span><\/p>\n

Few episodes from Mr. Akhmetshin\u2019s past seem more relevant to Mr. Mueller\u2019s investigation than his work for two Russian billionaires accused of infiltrating their adversaries\u2019 computers during nasty legal battles.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 took place less than a week before revelations that hackers had penetrated the Democratic National Committee\u2019s computers and obtained a trove of emails. Investigators have traced digital espionage to Russian spy agencies. There is no public evidence that Mr. Akhmetshin played any role in the D.N.C. hack.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first hacking case, which has not previously been reported, began when Mr. Akhmetshin served an alliance of businessmen led by Suleiman Kerimov \u2014 a financier close to Mr. Putin in a commercial and political dispute with a Russian competitor, Ashot Egiazaryan.<\/span><\/p>\n

In early 2011, two London lawyers on Mr. Egiazaryan\u2019s team separately received suspicious emails and hired forensic experts to scrutinize them, according to people involved in a Scotland Yard investigation. The experts found that the messages concealed spyware meant to infiltrate their computers, and they fed traceable documents into the spyware that were then opened by computers registered at the Moscow office park of one of Mr. Kerimov\u2019s companies.<\/span><\/p>\n

After an inquiry of more than 18 months, Scotland Yard investigators concluded in January 2013 that they lacked sufficient evidence to bring any charges, a spokesman said. Representatives of the lawyers targeted declined to comment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Akhmetshin has said in court papers that he was paid only by one businessman in the alliance with Mr. Kerimov, but coordinated with Mr. Kerimov\u2019s team.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two years later, hacking accusations arose in another case, this time lodged directly against Mr. Akhmetshin. He worked as a consultant to a law firm representing EuroChem, a fertilizer and mining company controlled by another Russian billionaire close to Mr. Putin \u2014 Andrey Melnichenko. Mr. Akhmetshin\u2019s target was a rival mining company, International Mineral Resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

Within months, documents stored in International Mineral Resources\u2019s computer systems began surfacing outside the company, leaked to journalists and others. The company concluded that its computers had been hacked, and replaced its servers. In lawsuits filed in federal court in Washington and state court in New York, the company accused EuroChem and Mr. Akhmetshin of computer espionage.<\/span><\/p>\n

EuroChem\u2019s information technology chief, Vladimir Chibisov, previously worked in the Russian government. He had written a book promoted as \u201ca hacker\u2019s Bible,\u201d which he described as a book \u201cabout us \u2014 about Russian programmers, men of the \u201980s and \u201990s\u201d who \u201chad done programming, and even a bit of hacking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Akhmetshin personally handed a thumb drive containing stolen documents to a lawyer engaged in another matter potentially damaging to the rival company, according to a person familiar with the matter. The same thumb drive was later obtained by investigators, and someone using the initials \u201cR.A.\u201d had gained access to its contents, according to court papers.<\/span><\/p>\n

A spokesman for Mr. Melnichenko said in a statement that he has never condoned hacking or other illegal activity, nor had he ever met or known Mr. Akhmetshin. The spokesman said Mr. Chibisov\u2019s book was \u201ctongue in cheek\u201d and \u201ccannot possibly be taken seriously.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

An investigator for the targeted company also testified that he had followed Mr. Akhmetshin in January 2014 to a meeting at London\u2019s Cafe Royal and watched him hand over an external hard drive to another individual. He said he had overheard Mr. Akhmetshin claim that he had paid a team of Russian hackers \u201ca lot of money\u201d for the records.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Akhmetshin acknowledged in a deposition that he had turned over a hard drive with information about the firm\u2019s owners. But he said he had obtained the data from a Kazakh contact through a loose network he called the \u201cLondon Information Bazaar.\u201d Asked about computer hacking, he replied, \u201cI do not know a single person who could do that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

International Mineral Resources dropped the lawsuits without explanation in early 2016, withdrawing all allegations before they could be adjudicated. The company said in a statement Friday that it dropped the charges \u201cafter careful consideration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A Key Kremlin Contact<\/span><\/p>\n

During the same period that Mr. Akhmetshin was accused of being involved in various hacking schemes, he appears to have been nurturing a relationship with Viktor Ivanov, once the deputy head of Russia\u2019s intelligence service, the F.S.B., and until last year a top aide to Mr. Putin.<\/span><\/p>\n

From 2009 to 2014, Mr. Ivanov led the Russian side of a joint effort with the Americans to combat drug trafficking in Afghanistan, part of an early Obama administration initiative to improve relations between Moscow and Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Mr. Ivanov traveled to Washington to promote the effort in October 2010, Mr. Akhmetshin helped shepherd him around town. In a deposition filed in one of the hacking cases, Mr. Ahkmetshin testified that he helped facilitate the Washington visit with one of Mr. Ivanov\u2019s aides, with whom he had served in the Red Army.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an affidavit in that same case, Mr. Akhmetshin said he had been in email contact with Mr. Ivanov on matters ranging \u201cfrom narco-trafficking and terrorism in Afghanistan to surveillance of undercover agents, suspected undercover agents and their identities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Reporters who encountered Mr. Akhmetshin during his travels to Afghanistan said he grew a beard and wore a skullcap to blend in with the local population. He never identified whom he worked for, but two former American officials involved with the counternarcotics program said the American side did not hire him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Ivanov, who retired early last year, could not be reached for comment about whether Mr. Akhmetshin was on the Russian government\u2019s payroll.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia ended the counternarcotics cooperation in 2014 after the United States imposed sanctions on Mr. Ivanov and other Putin allies in retaliation for Russia\u2019s invasion and seizure of Ukraine\u2019s Crimea region.<\/span><\/p>\n

There, too, Mr. Akhmetshin had tried to ally with Ukraine\u2019s pro-Moscow elements. Before the 2014 invasion, he told reporters, he unsuccessfully sought consulting work with the political party dominated by the nation\u2019s pro-Putin president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. A popular revolt forced Mr. Yanukovych to flee to Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Akhmetshin told journalists that he was a longtime acquaintance of Paul J. Manafort, who served as a high-paid consultant to Mr. Yanukovych for years before becoming chairman of the Trump campaign. Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Mr. Manafort, said, \u201cPaul doesn\u2019t know and hasn\u2019t worked with the man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year, Mr. Akhmetshin took on a new project high on the Kremlin\u2019s agenda: a $240,000 lobbying campaign to amend the Magnitsky Act, which imposes sanctions on Russians for human rights abuses. The law was named after Sergei L. Magnitsky, a Russian tax lawyer who died in custody after he uncovered a $230 million tax fraud allegedly tied to Russian officials. Several wealthy Russian businessmen financed a nonprofit group to spearhead the campaign, which was represented by Mr. Akhmetshin and a Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya.<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald J. Trump Jr. has said the promise of damaging information about Hillary Clinton was just an excuse for Ms. Veselnitskaya to get into Trump Tower to talk about why the law should be changed. Mr. Akhmetshin, a Washington resident, has told reporters that he just happened to be lunching with Ms. Veselnitskaya in Manhattan that day when she spontaneously invited him to the meeting with the president\u2019s son, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Mr. Manafort. He did not explain why she wanted him there.<\/span><\/p>\n

After Mr. Akhmetshin\u2019s presence came to light, a spokesman for Mr. Putin, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters: \u201cWe don\u2019t know anything about this person.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/08\/21\/us\/rinat-akhmetshin-russia-trump-meeting.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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