George Santos had 'business relationship' with cousin of sanctioned Russian oligarch: report

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) had a broader relationship than previously known with Andrew Intrater, a businessman who is the cousin of a known Russian oligarch, The Washington Postreported on Monday.

"Andrew Intrater and his wife each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos’ main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission," reported Isaac Stanley-Becker and Rosalind S. Helderman. However, "The relationship between Santos and Intrater goes beyond campaign contributions, according to a statement made privately by Santos in 2020 and a court filing the following year in a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against a Florida-based investment firm, Harbor City Capital, where Santos worked for more than a year."

Santos, who has faced a cascading scandal for lying about every aspect of his personal life on the campaign trail, previously claimed he was never alerted to possible fraud going on at Harbor City Capital, but a now-deleted tweet reveals he in fact was alerted to it two years ago by a prospective client.

"Taken together, the evidence suggests Santos may have had a business relationship with Intrater as Santos was first entering politics in 2020," said the report. "It also shows, according to the SEC filing, that Intrater put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Santos’ onetime employer, Harbor City, which was accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme."

Intrater's lavish spending on Santos' campaign, and committees supporting it, was first reported last December, along with Santos' boasts at the Conservative Political Action Conference that he had been to Moscow "many times in [his] career."

Intrater is the cousin of Viktor Vekselberg, a known Russian oligarch who has bragged about his ties to U.S. politics and has been sanctioned for his role in the Russian energy industry. Last April, Vekselberg's $90 million yacht was seized by Spanish authorities in the port of Palma de Mallorca.

"While Intrater is a U.S. citizen, his company, the investment firm Columbus Nova, has historically had extensive ties to the business interests of his Russian cousin. As recently as 2018, when Vekselberg was sanctioned by the Treasury Department, his conglomerate was Columbus Nova’s largest client, the company confirmed to The Post that year," said the report. "Intrater’s interactions in 2016 and 2017 with Michael Cohen, who at the time was working as a lawyer for Donald Trump, were probed during special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links between Trump and the Kremlin. Intrater’s company paid the lawyer and self-described Trump fixer to identify deals for his business, and court records show they exchanged hundreds of texts and phone calls."

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