Donald Trump’s business empire has faced scrutiny over possible conflicts of interest since he first became president. He returned to the presidency on 20 January 2025 (White House, 20 January 2025; White House, 45th and 47th President).
The documented record on Russian oligarchs and the Trump Organization consists mainly of talks about two Moscow tower projects that were never built. The Mueller report describes them; it does not describe a loan from a Russian oligarch, and none of the sources we reviewed documents one (see Did Trump owe money to Russian oligarchs?).
Role Of Russian Oligarchs In Trump’s Business Empire
Felix Sater, a New York-based real estate adviser who had worked with the Trump Organization, had explored a Trump Tower project in Moscow and accompanied Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. to Moscow in the mid-2000s, according to the Special Counsel’s report (Mueller report, Volume I, March 2019).
In approximately September 2015, Sater contacted Michael Cohen, then executive vice president of the Trump Organization, on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company, a Russian real estate developer controlled by Andrei Rozov. Sater proposed that I.C. Expert license the Trump name and brand and build the tower on its own (Mueller report, Volume I).
Between about 13 October and 2 November 2015, the Trump Organization and I.C. Expert completed a letter of intent, signed by Trump for the Trump Organization and by Rozov for I.C. Expert. The Trump Organization pursued the project through at least June 2016 (Mueller report, Volume I). The project was not publicly revealed until months after Trump’s inauguration, Bloomberg reported (The Moscow Times/Bloomberg, 22 April 2019).
Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in November 2018 to making false statements to Congress about, among other things, how long the Trump Tower Moscow project lasted (Mueller report, Volume I).
The Agalarov project, 2013 to 2014
The earlier effort began after the Miss Universe pageant, which Trump co-owned at the time, was held at the Agalarov-owned Crocus City Hall in Moscow in November 2013 (Mueller report, Volume I). Emin Agalarov, son of the developer Aras Agalarov, performed at the event.
Trump later tweeted at the elder Agalarov: “I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!” (11 November 2013)
In December 2013, after discussions with Trump, the Trump Organization agreed to accept a flat 3.5 percent commission on all sales, with no licensing fees or incentives (Mueller report, Volume I). The Crocus Group proposed an 800-unit, 194-meter building at Crocus City, the site of the pageant, and Ivanka Trump toured the site in February 2014 (Mueller report, Volume I).
From September 2014 the Trump Organization stopped responding in a timely fashion to the Crocus Group. The last communication the report found is dated 24 November 2014; the project did not develop past the planning stage and no construction occurred (Mueller report, Volume I).
Who was involved in Trump Tower Moscow
Donald Trump Jr. was the primary negotiator for the Trump Organization in the Agalarov talks, with Emin Agalarov and Irakli Kaveladze for the Crocus Group. In the 2015 project Cohen was the only Trump Organization representative to negotiate directly with I.C. Expert, according to the Mueller report (Mueller report, Volume I).
In an interview published in Salon on 12 November 2015, when Trump was a candidate for president, the host Bill O’Reilly told Trump that Putin “doesn’t make deals he just rolls soldiers in to cause destruction and shoots down airplanes.” Trump replied: “That’s because he’s given the opportunity. I mean, the people we have that represent us don’t know what they are doing.”
In the fall of 2015, Cohen also discussed the Moscow project with Giorgi Rtskhiladze, a US-based executive of the Georgian company Silk Road Group. Rtskhiladze had earlier been involved in a licensing deal with the Trump Organization for a Trump-branded property in Batumi, Georgia, and in discussions about a Trump-branded project in Astana, Kazakhstan. On 22 September 2015 Cohen forwarded him a preliminary design study for the Moscow project. Cohen told investigators that he declined Rtskhiladze’s proposal of a different partner and kept working with I.C. Expert (Mueller report, Volume I).
Did Trump owe money to Russian oligarchs?
No loan or debt owed by Trump or the Trump Organization to a Russian oligarch is documented in the sources reviewed for this article. What the sources document are licensing and commission arrangements for Moscow towers that were never built (see the Moscow projects above).
The Mueller report states that the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities” (Mueller report, Volume I).
The Guardian reported on 16 February 2017 that Deutsche Bank, which had lent Trump hundreds of millions of dollars, had examined his account for signs that its loans were underpinned by guarantees from Moscow. According to the Guardian’s account, the internal review “found no evidence of any Russia link”; the bank itself declined to say what the review found, and two bank sources told the Guardian it found no sign that the loans were underwritten by money from Moscow or any Russian bank. The Guardian cited a Bloomberg analysis that Trump then owed Deutsche Bank around $300 million (The Guardian, 16 February 2017).
Trump denied business interests in Russia throughout his 2016 campaign. In July 2016 he said the closest he had come to Russia was a Palm Beach home he sold to a Russian billionaire (The Moscow Times/Bloomberg, 22 April 2019).
Trump did not voluntarily release his tax returns. Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee released six years of them, for 2015 to 2020, on 30 December 2022 (Fox 5 New York, 30 December 2022). This article does not analyze the returns, and we did not review the Senate Intelligence Committee’s reports.
About this article
We checked this article against the sources listed below on 13 November 2026. Statements we could not trace to a source we had read were removed. Corrections follow our editorial policy.
Sources
- US Department of Justice: Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, March 2019
- The Guardian: Deutsche Bank examined Donald Trump’s account for Russia links, 16 February 2017
- The Moscow Times/Bloomberg: Trump’s Secret Moscow Skyscraper Pursuit Exposed Him to Kremlin, 22 April 2019
- Salon: Donald Trump battles Bill O’Reilly over Vladimir Putin’s ‘gangster’ image, 12 November 2015
- Donald Trump on X: post to Aras Agalarov, 11 November 2013
- Fox 5 New York: Trump’s tax returns made public after long fight with Congress, 30 December 2022
- The White House: Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions, 20 January 2025
Correction, 13 November 2026: An earlier version of this article attributed an estimate of Trump’s potential earnings from a Moscow tower to the Mueller report; the report does not contain it. It also gave dollar figures, investor names and dates for the Moscow projects that we could not confirm against a source we had read, and was written as if Trump were still serving his first term. We removed the unconfirmed details, added the section Did Trump owe money to Russian oligarchs? and updated the article for Trump’s return to office in January 2025.
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