The oligarch who helped bankroll Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding party in the Bahamas is now said to be talking business with him.
Trump Jr., President Donald Trump’s eldest son, allegedly discussed potential business deals with Umar Kremlev, the Kremlin-linked head of the sanctioned International Boxing Association, during a trip to Kazakhstan earlier in 2026, according to two sources familiar with the meeting who spoke with the independent Russian outlet Important Stories, a partner of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) reporting network. Important Stories published its report on Oct. 30.
Kremlev is no stranger to the family calendar. The boxing body he runs helped pay for Trump Jr.’s lavish May wedding to Bettina Anderson, and in August the Russian businessman joined the president’s son on a hunting trip in western Mongolia.
Anderson has called Kremlev a “dear friend” of the couple. Trump Jr. has insisted there is nothing untoward about the friendship, and it remains unclear what exactly the two men may have discussed in Kazakhstan. A representative for Trump Jr. told Important Stories that the two share a personal friendship but have never made deals together and do not plan to.
A Hunting Trip Without Photographs
During the Mongolia excursion, Trump Jr. was apparently at pains to avoid being photographed alongside Kremlev — a detail that sits awkwardly beside his own account of an ordinary friendship.
Kremlev is believed to be a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin and an alleged member of his inner circle. Claims that the relationship may now stretch into prospective business dealings are likely to sharpen security concerns about how close the president’s son has grown to a man of that standing in Moscow.
Armed Guards in National Guard Cars
Just how much weight Kremlev carries at home comes through in the detail of his security. Sources who know him personally told Important Stories that he travels with armed guards riding in vehicles supplied by Russia’s National Guard.
That is a level of federal protection reserved for powerful state officials or for figures designated by the Russian president himself. Kremlev’s associates have also described a close relationship with Alexei Rubezhnoi, the head of Russia’s presidential security service, who they say helped him build and protect his business empire.
Echoes of the Moscow Skyscraper
The questions are familiar ones for this family. President Trump has spent most of a decade answering for his own connections to the Putin government, and U.S. investigators concluded that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help him win — even as his company pursued plans for a skyscraper in Moscow deep into that campaign.
Trump Jr. sat for his own meeting during that race, taking a sit-down with a Russian lawyer after being offered damaging material about Hillary Clinton, his father’s opponent in the election. Special counsel Robert Mueller later documented extensive contacts between Trump associates and Russian-linked figures, but did not establish that the 2016 campaign conspired or coordinated with the Kremlin.
Another Russian Thread in Tbilisi
Kazakhstan and Mongolia are not the only places where the family’s deal-making has run into Moscow-linked money. In May, reporting revealed that a developer involved in the 70-story skyscraper that Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. plan to build in Tbilisi, Georgia, had ties to billionaire former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, whom Washington sanctioned in 2024 for helping the Kremlin undermine democracy in the country.
A further investigation turned up a second Russian connection to the same project through Biograpi Living, a company publicly identified as a partner on the Tbilisi tower. Biograpi Living is partly owned by Paata Gamgoneishvili, a Georgian oligarch who made his fortune in Moscow.
The timing could hardly be worse for the Trumps. The first family was already under intense scrutiny over claims it is cashing in on its influence during the second Trump presidency, and Democrats swept both the House and the Senate in the November midterms.
