Donald Trump, the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and the Quest to Meet Vladimir Putin
This article covers Donald Trump’s involvement with the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, his relationship with the Agalarov family, and his quest to meet Vladimir Putin. It is the ninth entry in the series entry in the series “Donald Trump, Corruption, and the Insidious Influence of Organized Crime.” While it is not necessary to read the earlier entries, it is recommended.
The first article examined Donald Trump’s early real estate career in Manhattan and his involvement in civic corruption and with organized crime.
The second article covered Trump’s connections to organized crime and civic corruption as a casino magnate in Atlantic City.
The third article dealt with the death of Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn, Trump’s purchase of Resorts International, and his financial downfall.
The fourth article covered Trump’s early links with Eurasian Organized Crime in New York and Atlantic City.
The fifth article examined Donald Trump’s second visit to Moscow in 1996 and Russian investments in Trump Organization real estate developments.
The sixth article covers Donald Trump’s relationship with Felix Sater and the Trump Organization’s corrupt Soho and Toronto developments.
The seventh article explores the corruption and links to organized crime in Trump’s overseas developments in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere.
The eighth article covers the illegal gambling operation run out of Trump Tower by the Taiwanchik-Trincher Eurasian organized crime outfit.
This article is an excerpt from my book, While We Slept: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of American Democracy, available here.
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Donald Trump purchased the rights to the Miss Universe Organization in 1996, which owned the Miss U.S.A. and Miss Teen U.S.A. pageants. For years, Trump had used the pageants as a means to promote his image as an international playboy and to bolster his business interests abroad.
Holding the 2015 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow was the brainchild of a portly British PR agent named Rob Goldstone and his client Emin Agalarov, the pop star son of Aras Agalarov, an Azerbaijani oligarch and billionaire construction maven. Emin was married to Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of the notoriously corrupt president of Azerbaijan.
Aras Agalarov, nicknamed “Putin’s Builder,” has not only worked on ultra-luxury real estate developments for Russia’s oligarch classes, but also is regularly awarded Russian government construction contracts ranging from infrastructure projects to soccer stadiums.
He also has considerable holdings in US real estate.
Aras Agalarov is close friends with Shalva Tchigirinsky and is also affiliated with Sam Kislin and Tamir Sapir. The connections between these three organize crime and Russian intelligence linked individuals and Trump is covered in the earlier articles in this series.
Agalarov co-owns Europe’s largest outdoor market, located on the outskirts of Moscow, with Tevfik Arif.
According to Catherine Belton, the KGB allowed Agalarov to move to the United States in 1989 where he set up Crocus International and was used as an agent to funnel money into the West.
KGB defector Yuri Shvets told Belton that Crocus could not have been established without the permission of the KGB.
According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Agalarovs are closely connected with Russian organized crime and have close relations with individuals involved with “murder, prostitution, weapons trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, narcotics trafficking, money laundering and other significant criminal enterprises.”
Agalarov enjoys close relations with the Russian government, including with Vladimir Putin and his press secretary Dmitry Peskov.
Other individuals in the Russian state power close to Agalarov is the Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika and the First Deputy Premier Igor Shuvalov, both of whom have been subjects of Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption exposés.
Emin Agalarov is known to be friends with Grigoriy Lepsveridze, a musician sanctioned by the US for his connections to organized crime. He also once employed Artem Klyushin, a bot developer for the Kremlin who has supported Russian malign influence operations.
Emin also reportedly performed at Solntsevskaya Bratva head Sergei Mikhailov’s 55th birthday party.
Between January and April of 2013, the President of the Miss Universe Paula Shugart negotiated with Goldstone and the Agalarov’s regarding hosting the pageant in Moscow.
The discussions centered around hosting the event at Crocus City Hall, a Moscow-based venue owned by Aras Agalarov.
In 2010, it hosted the 60th anniversary of the Russian military intelligence’s special missions department. The GRU later executed the hack-and-leak operation targeting the DNC and Clinton campaign to benefit Trump.
After it was agreed that the show would be privately funded by Agalarov, Shugart took the offer to Trump who happily approved. Aras and Emin Agalarov were then invited to attend the Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas to sign the contract.
Trump first met Rob Goldstone and the Agalarovs on June 15th, 2013, in Las Vegas, where they held a large private dinner in a restaurant at the Palazzo hotel and casino.
Of the twenty people present at the dinner, Trump was accompanied by Michael Cohen. They were joined by Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a Georgian-American vice president of Agalarov’s company Crocus International.
In 2000, the Government Accountability Office identified a business operated by Kaveladze that had opened up two bank accounts at two separate US banks and were used to move $1.4 billion from individuals in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe into the US financial system. The GAO report suggested this was done “for the purpose of money laundering.”
Kaveladze’s top client at the time was Crocus International.
Yuri Shvets told Catherine Belton that Kaveladze was an “illegal” Russian agent sent by the KGB to infiltrate the United States and gain citizenship.
After graduating college, Kaveladze was hired as a vice president at Crocus International and his status as a US citizen allowed him to open up US bank accounts.
Kaveladze’s company International Business Creations shared an address with other Agalarov companies and did business with the Commercial Bank of San Francisco, which was partially owned by Boris Avramovich Goldstein, a Latvian linked to the KGB.
The Commercial Bank of San Francisco also appears to have participated in the much larger Bank of New York money laundering scandal involving Semyon Mogilevich.
Read my in-depth description of Semyon Mogilevich’s sophisticated financial crimes, including the Bank of New York money laundering scandal here.
Following dinner at Palazzo, Trump and the entourage attended an adult-themed club at the hotel called “The Act” at the behest of the Agalarov’s. The Act was infamous for it’s lewd and sexualized entertainment, one example of which included a skit that featured college girls urinating on their professor.
The next day Trump and the Agalarovs attended the Miss USA pageant, which was being held in Las Vegas at the time, where they announced that the Miss Universe pageant would be held in Moscow that year.
Two days later, Trump tweeted: “Do you think Putin will be going to the Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow — if so, will he become my new best friend?”
Throughout the planning process of the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, both Donald Trump and Aras Agalarov reached out to Vladimir Putin and high level members of his administration with invitations to attend.
On June 21st, 2013, Rob Goldstone sent Emin Agalarov an email with the subject “Putin” in which he wrote, “[Trump] has a personal email [address] for VP [Vladimir Putin]” but that he needed a mailing address.
The next day Goldstone emailed Emin a draft of the invitation to Putin with the subject line “Draft of Putin letter for Donald Trump — please show to Aras and let me know before I send to Trump.”
“DT wants to send a letter to Putin inviting him to Miss Universe,” Trump’s longtime personal assistant Rhona Graff wrote to Paula Shugart on June 24th. “I asked Rob G[oldstone] to draft something we could tweak. If you see the letter below, he references a trip to Moscow by DT in advance of the actual pageant. What is he talking about?”
The Goldstone letter Graff referred to, written in Trump’s voice, stated: “I have always valued your kind offer for me to visit Moscow, and I will be doing so later this year prior to the contest. I want to personally invite you as my guest of honor to the November 9th Miss Universe Pageant, and would also hope to meet privately with you during my stay in Moscow.”
“I have no idea,” Shugart replied. “I’m finding out now.”
She discovered that Trump had told the Agalarovs that he would fly to Moscow in advance of the pageant in order to “facilitate a meeting” with Putin.
Three days later, June 27th, Goldstone again inquired with Emin as to where Trump’s assistant should send the “letter to Putin,” to which he replied he was “[o]n it.”
The next day, Goldstone sent Graff and Shugart the information for “who to forward letter from Mr. Trump to President Putin.”
It included the contact details for Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s personal Press Secretary. Peskov, Goldstone explained, “is in direct daily contact with the President and has been briefed to expect an email and physical letter.”
Graff then emailed another Trump Organization assistant a file titled “Dear President Putin.docx” and asked her to print it out. The next day she emailed Shugart and Goldstone a copy of the letter signed by Trump.
Later in September of 2013, there were further efforts to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin.
Goldstone wrote to Shugart and Graff on September 12th saying that he was travelling to Moscow and might have an opportunity to meet with “Putin’s personal private secretary.”
Goldstone further suggested that he could use the opportunity to bring up a potential meeting between Trump and Putin during the meeting, and that it was suggested to him that he take a signed copy of the invitation letter with him to the meeting.
Paula Shugart assumed that Goldstone was talking about meeting with Dmitry Peskov, and took the possibility of a meeting seriously as she believed that Aras Agalarov enjoyed personal access to Putin.
‘”Not a bad idea,” Rhona Graff replied to Goldstone. “Let me talk to Mr. Trump about it and I will get back to you asap.”
The next day, Graff wrote to Goldstone, “He’ll sign it in the morning and I’ll let you know Paula when someone can come over to pick it up.”
“I will have a hand signed letter from Donald Trump to President Putin asking to meet when he is in Moscow Nov 5 to 9th,” Goldstone wrote to Emin Agalarov and Ike Kaveladze on the day he received Graff’s affirmative reply. “Hopefully we can get this letter to Peskov or some other person next week in Moscow.”
“Trumps [sic] letter is with Peskov he will pass on to the president,” Emin Agalarov wrote to Goldstone on September 18th.
“According to [Trump’s] office,” Goldstone wrote to Emin, “he is keen to make himself available at any time to meet President Putin, and if necessary, would fly in earlier on Nov 6th.”
By this point, Trump was repeatedly expressing his desire to meet with Putin to a wide variety of people ranging from Paula Shugart to Emin Agalarov.
He also added Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen to his private guest list of individuals he wanted flown over to join him in Moscow for the pageant.
Alex Sapir is the son of Tamir Sapir, the former co-owner of Joy Lud Electronics who later connected Trump to Felix Sater’s and Tevfik Arif’s real estate company Bayrock.
The Israeli-born Rotem Rosen was Alex Sapir’s brother-in-law and then CEO of the Sapir Organization.
He was also known as Lev Leviev’s “right-hand man” and had served as the CEO of Leviev’s Africa Israel Investments USA.
Meanwhile Trump was engaged in a media charm offensive, lavishing praise on Putin.
On September 13th, in the aftermath of an editorial Putin published in The New York Times attacking the notion of American exceptionalism, Trump appeared on Piers Morgan’s CNN show.
“You think of the term as being fine, but all of sudden you say, what if you’re in Germany or Japan or any one of 100 different countries? You’re not going to like that term,” said Trump. “It’s very insulting and Putin really put it to [Obama] about that.”
Three days later he referred to his invitation to Putin to attend the Miss Universe pageant on Fox and Friends, claiming, “I know he’d like to go.”
On October 3rd, Putin told interviewer Larry King that Putin had “done a really good job outsmarting our country.”
On October 17th, Trump told David Letterman that he’d “done a lot of business with the Russians,” and described Putin as a “tough guy,” before falsely claiming that he had “met him once.”
Despite Trump’s effusive media campaign and the efforts of those around him, the proposed meeting with the Russian president remained elusive. As the pageant approached, Trump grew ever more obsessed with meeting Putin and urged his employees and contacts in Russia to make it happen.
On October 23rd, a little over two weeks before the pageant, Goldstone wrote Emin an email with the subject “Putin Trump meeting?” and asked “[w]hat is the status on a possible meeting between Trump And Mr Putin? Trump Office is asking.”
“Roman [Grachev] will find out,” Emin replied.
Grachev was the director of Crocus City Hall and had been the one to transmit the Putin invitation to Dmitry Peskov. Goldstone pinged Emin again a day later, pushing to hear about the potential meeting.
On Sunday, October 27th, Grachev’s deputy informed Goldstone and the group around Agalarov that Putin would come to a decision regarding meeting with Trump that Tuesday.
Throughout this period, Aras Agalarov himself was also pushing for the meeting. At one point, Ike Kaveladze overheard Agalarov discussing the potential meeting with Peskov.
“[W]hen I told the Presidential Administration that Trump was coming, and I told them what kind of event we were hosting, and how it will be seen by many people all over the world, the Presidential Administration responded that Vladimir Putin would like to meet Mr. Trump,” Agalarov stated in a later interview.
When asked why Putin wanted to meet Trump, Agalarov replied, “I convinced him to. You know the government here often pays visits to exhibitions, and we have a lot of national exhibitions taking place here. And I remember once when Putin was visiting one of the exhibition[s], I told him that we will have Donald Trump here for one of these events and we would have an audience of [many people]…”
“Putin pays attention to events like the Olympic Games, Formula 1, FIFA World Cup. He is interested in global events, and of course he was interested in this event. He thought he should meet this person who brought this global event to Russia. That was the main reason.”
In later October of 2013, Putin personally awarded Aras Agalarov Russia’s highest civilian medal, the Order of Honor. The day before, Paula Shugart, who was in Moscow for the ceremony, told Rhona Graff that Aras would bring up the potential Trump meeting with Putin.
On the day of the ceremony, Shurgart emailed Graff photos of Aras accepting the medal. “This was just sent to me. They were discussing DJT while this was happening. Stay tuned.”
“Well, I think if this is a serious and substantial offer to meet Putin, DJT would reconsider his travel plans,” Graff replied “Let’s talk when you know more.”
“I’ll know more in the morning but it sounds serious,” Shugart wrote to Graff. “I told my contact it would be major reshuffling and it would need to be worth it. Did you give him [Donald Trump] a heads up?”
“Any news on Putin?” Graff asked the next morning.
“No,” Shugart replied, “but at least I made Emin aware of the situation tonight at the event. We are following up in the AM. He said the meeting is definitely happening, he just isn’t sure if Putin wants 7th, 8th or 9th. He was told 7th but hasn’t received confirmation on information.”
Shugart was at this point working on setting up the Trump-Putin meeting on a daily basis, and discussed it with Trump nearly every time they spoke with one another.
Despite these efforts, the meeting with Putin was never finalized.
On October 31st, ten days before the Miss Universe pageant, the Crocus Group and the Miss Universe Organization hosted a charity auction in Moscow.
The Senate Intelligence Committee was able to get its hands on the event’s initial invite list, which featured a rogues gallery of Russian government, military and intelligence officials, members of Eurasian organized crime and individuals who have participated in malign influence campaigns.
Invitees included:
- Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
- Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu
- Former Russian intelligence head and Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin
- Putin’s former chief propagandist Vladislav Surkov
- Putin aide Vladimir Khozin
- Russian oligarch and head of Alfa Bank Petr Aven
- Azerbaijaini oligarch and LUKOIL CEO Vagit Alekperov
- Oleg Deripaska’s ex-wife Polina Deripaska
- Former KGB General, Putin confidante, Member of Ozero Cooperative, and CEO of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin
- Russian oligarch and key Putin ally Roman Abramovich
- Soviet Era Military Leader Boris Gromov
- Russian state owned Sberbank CEO Herman Gref
- FSB-linked lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who had represented NSA whistleblower and fugitive Edward Snowden
While it is unclear who among the invited attended, the list provides a glimpse into the Agalarovs relationships within the Russian power structure.
Trump arrived in Moscow on November 8th and was taken by Russian police escort to the Ritz Carlton.
According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the hotel has at least one Russian intelligence officer on its staff, its rooms are routinely surveilled by the Russian government and prostitutes are a regular presence.
Upon his arrival, Trump held a brief meeting with Miss Universe executives and the Agalarovs. Following the meeting, Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime head of personal security, claims he was approached by a Russian offering to send five women up to Trump’s suite that evening. Schiller testified that he turned the man down and didn’t take the offer seriously.
Trump then attended an early evening function and the sushi restaurant Nobu, located 15-minutes from the Kremlin and hosted by Aras Agalarov and Sberbank.
The event was attended by Sberbank CEO Herman Gref, known for his close relations with Putin.
Spanish intercepts indicate that Gref has had communications with members of the St. Petersburg-based and Putin-linked Tambovskaya Bratva criminal syndicate, including with one of it’s leaders, Gennady Petrov.
Read my description of Vladimir Putin’s early connections to the Tambovskaya Bratva while he was Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg here.
Days after the event, Trump sent a letter of praise to Gref, inviting him to join him for lunch or dinner when he was next in New York.
After Nobu, Trump traveled to Crocus City Hall for the pageant rehearsal. While there, he was given a tour by Emin Agalarov and at one point during their discussion Paula Shugart overheard them discussing a potential Trump Tower Moscow.
At 10pm that evening, Trump attended Aras Agalarov’s birthday party at Zafferano, a restaurant located in Crocus City Hall. The party was also attended by the Miss Universe contestants, Aras Agalarov’s friends and family and numerous members of the Russian elite.
While at the dinner, Trump was photographed with Igor Krutoy. As mentioned, Krutoy had held various discussions with Trump, Trump Jr. and Ivanka regarding a potential Trump Tower Riga project in Latvia. The project had derailed when Krutoy and his partner became wrapped up in a Latvian corruption investigation.
Krutoy, a music composer, had written songs for Emin Agalarov and at one point owned a neighboring home to Aras Agalarov in New Jersey. He is also a close personal friend to Rinat Akhmetov, a Ukrainian oligarch who was a client of Paul Manafort, Trump’s future campaign chairman.
Trump returned to the Ritz somewhere between 1:40am and 2am. While he had initially been booked to stay in the Presidential Suite, he was moved to the Carlton Suite.
Trump’s room bill indicates possible social activity after the birthday party, with a $720 charge from the hotel’s rooftop O2 Lounge, $306 charged to the room for shisha (a Middle Eastern water pipe also known as Hookah) and $146 in charges to the in-room bar, the timing of which is unclear.
According to Schiller, as he escorted Trump to his room, he told him about the offer of five women he had received earlier that day and the two laughed at the suggestion. Schiller then claims to have waited outside Trump’s room for a few minutes before retiring to bed.
The Senate Intelligence Committee noted that Schiller gave conflicting answers about the proposition of sending women up to Trump’s room, at one point telling them that he took the offer as a “joke” and then later saying he took it seriously.
Schiller steadfastly denied any such activities involving Trump and Russian women took place.
The next morning Trump made a brief appearance at a music video shoot for Emin Agalarov in which he had a brief cameo. He then attended a press conference in which he dubiously claimed to have a relationship with Putin and offered him effusive praise.
Throughout much of the day, Trump repeatedly asked whether anyone had heard if Putin would be attending the event.
Aras Agalarov later told The Washington Post that he had promised Trump that he would meet Putin.
Eventually, Aras received a phone call from Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitri Peskov. After handing the phone to Trump, an apologetic Peskov told Trump that Putin very much wanted to attend but that a traffic jam had delayed a diplomatic event at the Kremlin with the royal family of the Netherlands that Putin was obligated to attend.
While at the pageant Trump sat next to Aras Agalarov, and behind them sat Artem Klyushin, Emin Agalarov’s social media manager who had also worked on Kremlin influence operations.
Senior Putin aide Vladimir Kozhin also attended, along with many other Russian personalities and oligarchs, including Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov.
Another guest, the Russian comedian Vladimir Vinokur, was an associate of high level members of the Solntsevskaya Bratva and attended meetings held by Semyon Mogilevich in Budapest.
Trump only stayed in Moscow for one night, returning to the US to attend the 95th birthday of conservative evangelist Billy Graham. Back in the US, Trump began tweeting about a potential Trump Tower Moscow project done in partnership with the Agalarovs.
Shortly thereafter, Aras Agalarov’s daughter visited the Miss Universe office in New York and brought with her a small black, Fedoskino-style lacquer box that contained a sealed letter from Putin to Trump, the contents of which remain unknown.
Despite the extraordinary depth and number of contacts between Donald Trump and individuals from Russia and former Soviet states, many of them connected to organized crime and the intelligence establishment, it likely only scratches the surface.
The Trump Organization has had business operations in at least 20 countries, including Turkey, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, Uruguay, Ireland and Scotland, among others.
For years, Trump refused to release his tax returns to the public. While they leaked to The New York Times, and eight years of them were released to prosecutors in New York, these still only consist of Trump’s representations to the government. As of this writing, Trump remains under an ongoing IRS audit that has lasted for over a decade.
His refusal to reveal the identity of all his creditors means that the extent of his foreign financial entanglements remain largely unknown to this day.
Trump’s finances are further obscured by the fact that he uses a web of privately held, Delaware registered LLC’s and other corporate entities to hold his assets. Delaware LLC’s don’t need to publish financial statements or disclose the identity of their owner.
According to The Wall Street Journal, half of the revenue Trump reported in a 2016 federal financial disclosure form came from assets held by 96 LLC’s. Trump doesn’t just hold his own assets in secretive LLC’s, he sells to them.
Since the 1980s, 20% of all Trump condos, more than 1300, have been sold to shell companies in all-cash transactions made without a mortgage or inquiries from lenders. Similar information regarding international condo sales is not publicly available.
In 2014, James Dodson, a golf journalist and co-author of golf legend Arnold Palmer’s memoir, was invited to play golf with Trump and some of his family members at the Trump National Golf Club Charlotte.
While riding with Eric Trump in a golf cart, Dodson asked who was funding the acquisition of the golf courses, explaining that he knew of no banks that would invest in golf courses following the Great Recession.
According to Dodson, Eric replied, “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”