Russian boxing chief who paid for Trump Jr’s wedding party has extortion convictions and Putin’s backing

Until March 2010, the name of Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, now 43, meant nothing to anyone. The former aspiring boxer, who years later would pay for a lavish wedding party following the wedding of US President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, in the Bahamas, was then called Umar Lutfulloev.

By the time he turned 28, he reportedly already had convictions for extortion and assault. His hopes of a boxing career had collapsed for lack of discipline, and he wanted a fresh start and a way up the ladder of Russian society.

For that, he could hardly have chosen a better surname than Kremlev, which in effect means “the Kremlin’s man”. Like the name Trump Jr, it was one destined to be tied to fame, wealth and controversy.

The link between the two men emerged when it was revealed that Kremlev had spent at least $170,000 on hiring a private island and staging a fireworks show as part of the celebrations for Trump Jr’s marriage to Bettina Anderson.

Congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, asked the obvious question: “What did he get in return? We need answers.” The newlyweds were quick to respond. “Friendship doesn’t require political motives. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is just a wedding gift,” they said, before offering to return the money.

The US President has since said his son has repaid Kremlev, adding that such gestures are common at weddings. Congressional Democrats have opened an inquiry into the payment, while US Attorney General Todd Blanche has said he has no plans to investigate.

That may not be the whole story, however. According to an investigation by the Telegraph, the relationship between the two men runs much deeper, and Kremlev appears to have had a clear goal in mind.

Kremlev grew up in Serpukhov, a city of about 120,000 people, 60 miles south of Moscow and 5,729 miles east of Little Pipe Cay, the Bahamian island he rented for the US president’s son. Born to a Tajik mother in a Muslim family, he embraced the role of outsider from the start.

He took up boxing as a boy but has admitted in an interview that he quit at 19 because he lacked the necessary discipline. Even on the day of a fight, he could be found in a nightclub at 4am. With big hands and the build of a heavyweight, Kremlev spent the next few years searching for a path that suited him. He stayed in the boxing world, working as a fight promoter.

According to the Russian investigative outlet Proekt, he was convicted of extortion in 2004 and of assault in 2007, although the exact circumstances of both cases remain unclear. Kremlev has not denied the convictions.

After changing his name, one of his first stops was the Night Wolves, a leather-clad motorcycle brotherhood famous for its Harley-Davidson rides across Russia, whose members appear with nationalist flags and Orthodox crosses. By then, Kremlev had also changed his religion.

The Night Wolves emerged during perestroika, the economic restructuring of the 1980s, as a group of bikers and rock music fans. They were led by Alexander Zaldostanov, known as “the Surgeon”, a close friend of Putin.

It was in this motley world that Kremlev began cultivating the connections that would turn him from boxer into a powerful figure in Russian society. The most important was with Alexei Rubezhny, a major general in the Federal Protective Service (FSO), which guards senior state officials. The two became inseparable.

By 2016, Rubezhny was head of the Presidential Security Service, which gave Kremlev access to Putin. His career took off from there.

He rose quickly through the ranks and in 2017 took over as head of the Russian Boxing Federation. But his appetite had been whetted, and it was far from satisfied. The International Boxing Association (AIBA) was then in deep crisis, facing corruption allegations that led in 2019 to its initial suspension from the Olympics as the body responsible for Olympic boxing.

Kremlev promised sweeping reforms and to clear a debt estimated at $16m, with the aim of winning back control of Olympic boxing for the organisation. In 2020 he won the presidency comfortably, despite speaking little or no English. As he had done with himself, he reset the organisation by changing its name, to the International Boxing Association (IBA).

A partnership with Gazprom, the Russian state energy giant, followed. The debt was wiped out and prize money rose. “Why shouldn’t amateur boxers be able to pay their mortgages and support their families?” Kremlev said at the time.

In 2022, the IBA lifted restrictions imposed earlier that year and allowed Russian and Belarusian boxers to compete under their national flags and anthems, while expelling the Ukrainian Boxing Federation. The following year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted, citing Russia’s war in Ukraine, to strip the IBA of its status as the sport’s world governing body.

It was not only Kremlev’s boxers who were paid well. In 2019, a company of his won the right to become sole operator of Russia’s national lottery. In a pattern that would be repeated several times, the lottery soon became a sponsor of the IBA.

Over the following years, Kremlev acquired stakes in three of Russia’s biggest betting firms: Fonbet, Liga Stavok and Pari. Russian media have reported that the deals had the backing of Andrei Kostin, the sanctioned financier and chairman of the Kremlin-linked VTB bank, who has been described as Putin’s “piggy bank banker”.

The firms appear to have had combined revenues of about 625bn roubles (£5.5bn) in 2023, and Liga Stavok is now a key partner of the IBA.

Kremlev also gradually took control of Tsupis, a payments company that links players with betting firms and takes a commission on every bet. In 2021, Putin signed an anti-fraud decree that handed Tsupis a monopoly on this highly lucrative activity. Around the same time, the bodies regulating the betting market also came under Kremlev’s control and were merged into a single oversight organisation, with several board members reportedly drawn from his network in the boxing world.

In his home town of Serpukhov, as he became an oligarch, Kremlev earned the nickname “the shadow mayor” after amassing an impressive property portfolio. Some of it is said to have come to him after the redistribution of assets belonging to the jailed former mayor, Alexander Shestun.

Sources say he acquired farmland, industrial sites, a port, a shopping centre and a hotel, and in 2024 Kremlev is also reported to have benefited from an expropriation. In February, the Kremlin seized Rolf, Russia’s largest car dealership group, from its exiled owner Sergei Petrov, a former opposition MP. By September it had passed to Kremlev in a deal worth 35bn roubles.

In a statement, Rolf introduced Kremlev as its new owner, describing him as a “strategic investor who will allow the company to preserve its unique corporate culture and broaden its range of activities, with an emphasis on greater efficiency and attracting new partners and customers”.

One of those new partners, according to later reports by Proekt, was the IBA.

Kremlev has amassed a personal fortune estimated at up to £300m and holds other posts, including the presidency of the International Backgammon Federation. He has never hidden his political sympathies.

“Thanks to one man, there are truly all kinds of opportunities today to make money and pursue more,” he said in a filmed interview in 2024, which was spotted by the Guardian. “That man, of course, is our president, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”

A few months later, Ukraine imposed sanctions on him. He is not, however, under sanctions from Britain, the US or the European Union.

In April, Putin awarded Kremlev the Order of Friendship. Days before Trump Jr’s wedding, Kremlev accompanied the Russian president on a visit to China , insisting he was not there in any official capacity.

As is often the case with the families of powerful and wealthy patriarchs, Kremlev’s relatives appear to have gained from his rise. In 2024, Russia’s Novaya Gazeta reported that he had given his wife, Anastasia Leshchinskaya, then 21, a barbershop and a cafe in Serpukhov, as well as luxury cars. The Porsche, Lamborghini and Aston Martin she is said to own have reportedly collected about 50 fines from Moscow region traffic police, in flagrant disregard of the rules.

Leshchinskaya was a well-known TikTok creator and one half of the duo “twinsrussian”.

It is her twin sister who has attracted even more attention. Ekaterina Leshchinskaya runs the pro-Putin organisation Healthy Fatherland, a sporting and patriotic movement that Kyiv has sanctioned over its alleged role in the abduction, deportation and forced transfer of children from Ukraine. She has also met the Russian president repeatedly.

It was apparently this very link between Trump Jr and Kremlev that prompted First Lady Melania Trump, who has mediated in deals with Russian officials over the return of Ukrainian children, to distance herself from her stepson’s wedding. A spokesperson said: “Mrs Trump does not have, and never has had, any relationship with Mr Kremlev.”

Trump Jr, however, does. Exactly how the president’s son entered Kremlev’s circle remains unclear. A spokesperson for Trump Jr said the two men, both keen hunters, met through a mutual friend and “bonded over their love of boxing and the outdoors”.

Trump Jr has also been around boxing since childhood, because his father promoted fights. At the age of 10, he watched Mike Tyson demolish Michael Spinks in just 91 seconds at the Trump Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City.

The mutual friend has not been named, but both men are close to a Turkish businessman, Kaan Karakaya. Karakaya is reported to have been present on a controversial hunting trip to Mongolia in 2019, during which Trump Jr shot and killed an endangered sheep.

In September last year, at an IBA event in Istanbul attended by eight-division world champion Manny Pacquiao, Kremlev announced Karakaya’s appointment as the organisation’s representative in Turkey.

“Kaan has been a bridge between different worlds, a friend who brings people together,” Kremlev said.

Trump Jr attended the same IBA event and sat next to Kremlev on stage. The two men already appeared to have a friendly relationship, despite the Russian’s limited English. In a particularly warm tribute, Kremlev said he was “proud to be here with my friend” and promised that he and Trump Jr would “protect transparency in boxing and pave the way for the next generation”.