A wealthy Russian businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin financed the celebrations in the Bahamas that immediately followed Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding to Bettina Anderson last May, according to two people familiar with the matter cited by The New York Times.
He is Umar Kremlev, the president of the International Boxing Association (IBA), a scandal-plagued sports league based in Switzerland, funded by the Russian state energy giant Gazprom. He recently accompanied Putin on a delegation to China and is subject to Ukrainian sanctions describing him as a “close friend of the head of Putin’s security service.”
In a statement posted on Instagram, the couple confirmed that Kremlev paid for two nights of post-wedding events held on remote islands in the Bahamas.
“Our dear friend Umar very generously organized two incredible nights of celebration for us after our wedding,” the statement said, accompanied by photos showing President Trump’s adult children and their friends celebrating after the marriage. “It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, something we were—and continue to be—incredibly grateful for.”
Trump Jr. and his wife added: “It is unfortunate that something so personal and joyful can be reinterpreted as political or sinister simply because of who a person is or where they come from. Friendship does not require a political motive. Generosity does not automatically carry a hidden agenda. And sometimes, a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.”
The statement did not address why 48-year-old Trump Jr. did not pay for the island stay and fireworks display himself. Forbes recently estimated his net worth at about $300 million, The New York Times noted.
In the statement, the couple explained that they married in an intimate ceremony with only their family present and then celebrated with a larger group. They added that the weekend trip, funded by Kremlev, was already planned and was not initially intended to celebrate the wedding.
The news was first published by the investigative journalism site ProPublica, which had reported that Kremlev financed the wedding celebration. The Russian businessman did not respond to a request for comment made by The Wall Street Journal.
President Donald Trump did not attend his son’s wedding, which took place over the Memorial Day weekend. “I have no idea who Umar is, I’ve never heard of him,” the president said in a statement, distinguishing between the ceremony and the post-wedding events. “It was an after-party in his honor. No big deal!”
First Lady Melania Trump, who did not attend the wedding or the after-party, distanced herself from the events. “Mrs. Trump has no, and has never had, any relationship with Mr. Kremlev,” according to a spokesperson for the first lady who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. “Mrs. Trump was not involved at all in organizing the wedding and had no knowledge of any aspect of its financial planning.”
In photos of the celebration in the Bahamas seen by The Wall Street Journal, guests posed under a heart, and one guest captioned her post “the wedding of the century.” In an interview with the Journal, a wedding guest recalled seeing a group of people speaking Russian, but the guest did not know who they were.
ProPublica indicated that at the May 24 party, scantily clad dancers in high heels and sailor hats performed for Trump Jr. and his guests. “It was the last night of their wedding, a lavish three-day party held on two ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier cake with confetti had been flown in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes landed on the islands before guests settled into their seaside villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his wife in his arms as fireworks were launched from a barge over the sea,” the site reported.
“It was everything we had dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.
According to documents reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event, Kremlev covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in wedding expenses. The oligarch paid the rent for one of the private islands where the reception was held and where guests stayed. He was also responsible for other major expenses, such as the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Wedding payments came from an entity affiliated with the IBA in Dubai, which the association uses for its financial transactions.
The guest list included about 50 people. Among them were Jared Kushner—Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law who has been helping lead U.S. government negotiations with Russia over the war in Ukraine—his brother Eric Trump, and Kremlev, an imposing man with a shaved head who spoke limited English. The oligarch was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. At times, they kept apart, speaking Russian.
“Kremlev’s previously unknown relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary fact: a member of Putin’s circle financing the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family. For a decade, Putin’s government, considered one of the main adversaries of the United States, has been accused of trying to influence U.S. elections. Russia’s attempts to court the Trumps before the 2016 elections sparked a controversy that marked much of the president’s first term,” the site said.
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Meanwhile, The New York Times denounced that “the payments constituted a blatant violation of ethical standards for the family of a U.S. president.”
“To avoid foreign interference, it is generally expected that a president’s family stays away from such personal and costly gifts, especially when they come from someone from a country like Russia, an adversary known for covertly promoting its geopolitical agenda. The concern, according to ethics experts, is that a foreign actor could lavish gifts on a president’s family member and, over time, expect something in return,” the newspaper said.
Indeed, national security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr.’s acceptance of the Russian oligarch’s generosity, stating it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating that connection?
“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point you’ll owe me something,” Frank Montoya Jr., a former FBI official with a long career who held senior counterintelligence positions, told ProPublica. Oligarchs like Kremlev usually act in coordination with the Russian government. While it’s unclear if that happened in this case, Trump Jr. put himself in a delicate position, Montoya said. “This should be unthinkable for the president’s son. Period.”
“A gift from such an unusual source sets off alarms about the matter,” said Kedric Payne, director of the ethics program at the Campaign Legal Center. “It completely changed my perception of how far excesses are going in these ethical matters,” he told the Times.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Kremlev has been working to expand the influence of his International Boxing Association, which he has chaired since 2020, and has held several meetings with Donald Trump Jr. since President Trump took office. Kremlev began boxing in his hometown, Serpukhov, south of Moscow.
Last year, Kremlev sat next to Donald Trump Jr. on a panel at a conference in Istanbul, accompanied by Rasheda Ali Walsh, daughter of Muhammad Ali. “President Kremlev and Donald Trump Jr. made it clear that this alliance will not remain a mere symbol,” the IBA said in a statement after the conference.
On May 24, amid the Bahamian celebrations he himself financed, Kremlev posted a photo of himself walking through the forest wearing a T-shirt showing an image of Vladimir Putin and saying: “Who took Berlin by storm?”
Earlier this summer, Kremlev’s IBA organized its first bare-knuckle boxing tournament in the U.S. with a card of 10 fights including boxing, mixed martial arts, kickboxing, and bare-knuckle fights. The event was to be hosted by controversial former professional kickboxer Andrew Tate, who was then back in the U.S.
The independent Russian media outlet Proekt noted that Kremlev’s real name was Umar Lutfulloyev and that he had a criminal record for extortion and assault.
According to The Washington Post in 2024, as president of the Russian Boxing Federation, Kremlev gifted Putin a diamond boxing glove, and the Kremlin leader awarded him the prestigious state decoration known as the Order of Merit for the Fatherland. In April, Putin granted him another distinction: the Order of Friendship.
Former senior IBA officials said Kremlev had a clear political agenda. “Umar is influenced by Putin. He used sport to exert soft political influence,” a former IBA board member told ProPublica. “It’s geopolitics. That it’s boxing is pure coincidence,” he added.
Kremlev, 43, is also actively involved in an organization called Healthy Fatherland, run by his wife’s 23-year-old twin sister. This group, which promotes healthy eating and youth sports, is subject to Ukrainian sanctions for its alleged involvement in a program to kidnap Ukrainian children from occupied territories and relocate them under the pretext of “rehabilitation.”
Kremlev’s close relationship with the government has enriched him. According to Proekt, Putin used state resources to make the businessman a dominant player in the Russian sports betting industry, and one of his companies was chosen to operate the national lottery. After Putin nationalized Russia’s largest car dealership in 2023, Kremlev also became its owner.
