she would know, she used to work for the agency. does the cia keep files on all prominent dual citizen americans? the cia doesn t have the resources or the manpower or the time to monitor everyone. he would have had to do something to rise to their level of interest or to be connected to someone. definitely have connections to russian government without a doubt. he now lives in washington, d.c., a member of a group of activists who are vocal critics of putin s russia, he says the owners of tnk, kukis employers were oligarchs, powerful ones. they re extremely closely connected. i would call them the inner circle of putin. putin was consolidating his power, making his inner circle evenen tighter. loyal oligarch s got rich, enemies had their assets seized. in 20034, the ceo of russia s
congratulations on a great spot you just did. i m happy to hear you say that, i m curious to hear your thoughts. what do you think about what we uncovered about simon kukis. you know, that s just another piece in a mosaic that continues to grow. and it fits in with a pattern of big money rolling into trump s coffers during the campaign and after the campaign into the inaugural fund. you talked about the amount of money that kukis gave in january of 2017, a few months later, now we re talking about the inauguration, trump s inaugural fund, trump is getting $250,000 from a guy named andrew entrader who is the cousin of victor veksanberg, a tremendously significant russian oligarch. the same time the inaugust ural fund is getting money from american russians who have
he was very stingy, and he was never giving donations of his own free will to political parties, all of a sudden, he starts to give big donations, which is very surprising to my friends who know him. what was it about the trump campaign that caused kukis to change the habits of a lifetime? well, we found a possible answer in an e-mail exchange in which kukis appears to be reporting back to a high ranking russian official. if you could take a look at them and tell us what you think we showed moran some printouts. what s your impression? those are very interesting and very suspicious. why suspicious? the way of communicating, there s a vailed subtext behind the words, it s clear that neither party wants to come straight out in e-mail and say what they re talking about. the e-mails were obtained
it did not happen by accident. it happened after russia launched a concerted campaign more than a decade ago to gain a foothold in american society. tonight we have exclusive reporting, we ve been investigating someone who lives right here, someone you ve probably never heard of, he s an oil executive born in russia and who out of the blue started making large donations to trump and the republicans in 2016. as an american citizen, his donations were perfectly legal. sources familiar with the investigation tell us special council robert mueller has been looking into him and his donations. and that makes a lot of sense, considering what we found. here s our exclusive investigation, which we conducted in conjunction with the guardian newspaper. in politics, money buys access, and sieman kukis got his money s worth. the russian born american businessman donated hundreds of
biggest oil company was arrested on charges of fraud and kukis was picked to take over. that tells me he was in favor in the kremlin. they re not going to get rid of someone and replace him with one of his cronies. they re going to replace him with someone that s acceptable to the kremlin. he was planning to retire anyway. so he could pursue other ambiti ambitions. 10 years of hard labor probably waentz one of his pursuits, but that s what he got. just as the american campaign season was heating up, kukis suddenly returned to houston and started sending those fat checks to the trump victory committee.