RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Multiple thoughts. " Aras Agalarov made a suitable sherpa. While not a member of Putin’s inner circle, Agalarov cultivated friendly relations with the Kremlin while rising to the country’s oligarch class with a profitable network of shopping malls. He travelled around in a $44m Gulfstream private jet.
Less than two weeks before the Miss Universe finals, Putin awarded Agalarov the prestigious Order of Honor medal, after Crocus had completed for him a billion-dollar transformation of a former military base into a new state university.
Separately, one of Agalarov’s top executives, Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, also has his own relationships with several influential Russians. Kaveladze, a publicity-shy Crocus vice president, was the so-called “eighth man” at the 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Donald Jr hoped to receive dirt on Clinton.
While relatively unknown to the public before news of the meeting emerged in July, Kaveladze has in fact been an associate of some of Russia’s richest and most powerful people for the past three decades.
The Guardian has established that Kaveladze was involved in the $341m takeover of a US company by a Russian mining firm belonging to an associate of Putin, and was a business partner to two former senior officials at Russia’s central bank.
The deal was the first time a Russian company had ever taken a majority stake in a publicly traded US company. It was viewed as critical by the Kremlin. Putin was reported at the time to have personally advocated for the deal’s approval by US regulators during a meeting with then president George W Bush earlier in 2003."