Tag: VIktor Vekselberg

This Russian oligarch reportedly bragged of his U.S. influence after Trump’s election — and he has a direct tie to Michael Cohen

Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The sprawling connections between Trump and Russia never end.

Viktor Vekselberg is among the Russian oligarchs that Michael Cohen came into contact with during his years as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney. The 61-year-old Ukraine-born Vekselberg has had business and political contacts in the U.S. for decades—and after the 2016 presidential election, reportedly bragged about his ties to the Trump Organization.

“Soon,” Bloomberg News reports in a new article, “Trump would be in the White House, and Vekselberg would be privately boasting of having the pull needed to help achieve the sanctions relief the Kremlin was craving.”

But sanctions relief, according to Bloomberg, is the last thing Vekselberg experienced after Trump was sworn in as president—and his U.S. activities have cost him billions of dollars in the Trump era.

View the complete December 7 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet.org website here.

Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg met with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen days before the inauguration

The following article by Rosalind S. Helderman was posted on the Washington Post website May 25, 2018:

Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg acquired his wealth in the post-Soviet era’s oil and gas industry. Credit: Alexander Ryumin, AP

President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, met at Trump Tower in New York days before the 2017 inauguration with a Russian billionaire who was sanctioned this year by the U.S. government.

The meeting between Cohen and Viktor Vekselberg, who made his fortune in the energy industry, was an impromptu session arranged by Vekselberg’s cousin, Andrew Intrater, a New York investment manager who was also in attendance, according to a person with knowledge of the encounter.

Among the topics the three men discussed was Vekselberg’s desire for better relations between the United States and Russia, the person said, who added that Vekselberg did not encounter Trump or any of his other advisers. The meeting was first reported by the New York Times. Continue reading “Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg met with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen days before the inauguration”