by Luke Harding
Agalarov’s son, Emin, had given him the British-made jeep as a present, he said. Emin was a well-known pop star married to one of the daughters of Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, he explained. Agalarov was Azeri-Russian. He was born in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, in 1955, and moved to Moscow in 1981, he told me. He obviously moved in the right circles: Aliyev’s late father, Heydar, was Soviet Azerbaijan’s KGB chief and—like Kryuchkov—an Andropov protégé. In 1993 Heydar became Azerbaijan’s president.
We went past a waterfall. Agalarov’s bodyguards followed us in a sleek black Mercedes, keeping a respectful distance. The tycoon said he’d studied business and economics. He was the first person in Russia to organize international exhibitions—this would become his Crocus Group. He started a chain of shoe stores, he said. There were setbacks: “I lost everything in the crisis of 1997. I closed all my stores. I had a $100 million loan.”
By 2000 Agalarov had bounced back. The same year he built Crocus City—a vast shopping center and exhibition space next to Moscow’s churning MKAD outer ring road.
The idea of an exclusive estate for the rich had come from the United States, I discovered. Agalarov said he’d seen “prototypes” for the kind of community he wanted to create during trips to Alpine in New Jersey and Greenwich in Connecticut. Alpine is an exclusive cliff-top borough, twenty miles north of New York, with property prices greater than West Palm Beach or Beverly Hills. It would shortly become the United States’ most expensive address.
“I had a kind of jealousy. Why can’t we do this in Russia? This was the source of the idea,” Agalarov said. “Then I started to buy land.” As Agalarov’s land holding grew—he would accumulate 320 hectares—so did his vision, to encompass fourteen lakes (“the length of these lakes is 3.5 kilometers”), an eighteen-hole golf course (“designed by a U.S. consultant”), and Agalarov’s personal mansion (“I have not started building my house”).
There were a few wrinkles along the way. Agalarov was keen to demolish properties in a nearby village, believing they spoiled the view. Some villagers didn’t want to sell. The man at number 54—a decrepit redbrick cottage—was holding out despite being offered $1 million. “He’ll sell in the end,” Agalarov told me.
Then there were the customers. As part of his social experiment, Agalarov said he’d drawn up a set of rules for anyone wishing to buy one of his properties. First, bodyguards were banned. They were banished to a purpose-built house on the periphery of the estate, complete with billiard table. Second, residents weren’t allowed to shoot at birds, set off fireworks, or hang out washing. Third, no dogs.
“We want normal rich people here,” Agalarov said. He personally vetted all applicants. “One told me he had an Afghan shepherd dog. I wouldn’t sell him a house. I lost $30 million because of a dog!” When complete, the estate would be the “most beautiful place in Moscow”—superior even to Rublyovka, the exclusive dacha colony set in pine forests west of the capital, where Putin resided.
The migrant workers building Agalarov’s dream came from China, Tajikistan, and Belarus. The country that loomed large in Agalarov’s thinking, however, was America. Agalarov said his nineteen-year-old daughter, Sheila, was studying in New York, at the Fashion Institute of Technology. His wife, Irina, “stayed with her.” Agalarov had a “small house in the United States.” He preferred to live in Russia.
“I don’t like big words like patriotism. You don’t show it. But everything I do is connected to Russia,” he told me. “I can’t stay there [in the United States]. I don’t have anything to do there. My work is here. My life is here. My circle is here.” He spent each day on site (“Saturday and Sunday I’m here”), viewing his bold architectural creation not as toil but as “a hobby.”
Agalarov has been described as Russia’s Trump. Certainly, there were points of overlap: like Trump, Agalarov believed that Forbes willfully understated the size of his fortune. In 2007 Agalarov was ninety-fifth on its rich list, worth $540 million. Agalarov told me the real figure was more like $10 billion. His land assets alone “came to $6 billion.” “It’s wrong for everybody,” he grumbled.
Not that this money was an end in itself. “For me money is nothing. It’s like an instrument to make something crazy,” Agalarov said. And—again like Trump—Agalarov believed in showmanship and visible excess. I asked Agalarov if Moscow’s rich were slowly developing subtler tastes. “No. It’s still about show. Show is continuing,” he replied.
Despite these similarities, there were differences. Unlike Trump, Agalarov existed in a stark political space in which the Kremlin made the rules. Being a member of the Russian elite brought privileges—and obligations. If the presidential administration wanted you to do something, you delivered. The Crocus Group built a federal university near Vladivostok; Agalarov would later agree to construct two soccer stadiums for Russia’s 2018 World Cup, in Kaliningrad and Rostov.
Agalarov’s wealth was provisional, then. Much of his income came from state contracts. If he fell from favor, someone else would take everything away, including his beloved estate and its designer boulders.
Toward the end of my tour, I asked Agalarov if he’d ever paid bribes. He said he had not. He had, he said, impeccable relations with the Moscow region—its ministers and governor—where his utopia was being shaped. The region was separate from Moscow City Hall and had its own HQ next to Crocus City. It was more dynamic, with “one and a half times” more construction, he said.
Though he didn’t mention her by name, one of Agalarov’s lawyers was the region’s top attorney. Her name was Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya’s former husband, Alexander Mitusov, was a former prosecutor who had become the region’s deputy transport minister. Veselnitskaya worked in turn for Mitusov’s boss, Pyotr Katsyv.
It was Katsyv’s son, Denis, who would shortly find himself at the center of an international scandal. He was one of a series of Russian officials accused of involvement in the case of Sergei Magnitsky. At that point Magnitsky, an accountant, was in prison. He had investigated and discovered a $230 million tax fraud scheme involving Katsyv and others. They had allegedly stolen taxes paid by Hermitage Capital, an investment fund run by a U.S.-born British CEO, Bill Browder.
In 2009, Magnitsky died in custody—murdered, Browder said, by the Russian state. Veselnitskaya would later expend much effort seeking to overturn a U.S. law, the Magnitsky Act, that punished the Russians allegedly involved, including Katsyv. She hired a U.S. political research firm to lobby in D.C. This was, ironically enough, Fusion GPS—the same outfit that commissioned Steele.
The Moscow region functioned at a level well below the Kremlin. But Veselnitskaya was known to be close to Russia’s prosecutor general, Yury Chaika. Agalarov would later defend Chaika publicly when he was accused of corruption. According to one person who worked with her, Veselnitskaya was “fastidious” and “extremely smart.” And, the person said, “would never act without authority.” Another associate described her as ambitious and capable, adding: “She wasn’t a Kremlin insider. She deeply wanted to be one.”
Putin was furious about the passage of the Magnitsky Act. He retaliated by banning the adoption of Russian babies by U.S. couples. The Kremlin launched a campaign to overturn the act. It frequently lobbied on the issue of “adoptions”—Kremlin-speak for lifting U.S. sanctions.
So Putin’s interests and Veselnitskaya’s interests neatly coincided. Their common goal: to repeal American sanctions.
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Trump made further attempts at doing business in Russia. In 2007 he launched his latest product at the “millionaire’s fair.” This was an annual event for the rich and the aspirational, held at Agalarov’s Crocus City Mall. The product was vodka—specifically “super premium” Trump vodka. Around this time Trump sought to register these brands in Russia: Trump, Trump Tower, Trump International Hotel and Tower, and Trump Home.
The vodka was another commercial flop. By the time I visited the fair in 2008, it was nowhere
to be seen. There were plenty of other things on offer: a beachside villa, for example, and a helicopter to take you there with an interior designed by Versace. I found a luxury German dental clinic, a sculptor selling bronze female nudes, and a yacht stand. There, a UK-made Princess yacht, complete with double bed and plasma TV.
For millionaires entry was free. Everybody else had to pay $64 admission. Many of the men drifted around in tuxedos; young women wore cocktail dresses. “I’m not looking for a rich husband. I’m looking for someone with a big personality,” said Irina, twenty-six, photographing her friend Olga in an Aston Martin car. (After a few seconds of reflection she conceded: “Obviously, if he was an oligarch with a big personality that would be okay.”)
After vodka, Trump tried something else in Russia. From 1996 to 2015 Trump co-owned with NBC the rights to the Miss Universe beauty contest. According to the Russian press, Trump had been thinking about holding the 2013 contest in Paris. It was at this point that Agalarov’s son, Emin—a fan of Trump’s TV show The Apprentice—persuaded Trump to bring the contest to Moscow.
Emin had New York connections: he had studied in Switzerland and at New York’s Manhattan Marymount College. In January 2013 the Agalarovs flew to Las Vegas to meet with Trump, at the Miss America beauty pageant.
Agalarov Sr. backed Miss Universe in Moscow—offering to pay Trump around $14 million in rights to host the contest. Why? The event worked on several levels. There was a state-friendly dimension. It showcased Russia ahead of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, hosted by Moscow. It was good PR at a time when Putin faced Western criticism over his clampdown on civil society.
The contest was also an opportunity to show off the Agalarov brand and to boost Emin’s career as a pop artist. Emin would perform before a global TV audience. Finally, according to the Steele dossier, the Kremlin was actively cultivating Trump—an on-off process that had seemingly begun back in 1987 and resumed, the dossier said, around 2008. The FSB would have known of Trump’s arrival and Ritz-Carlton stay.
Trump offered plenty of possibilities. He was in the midst of an ugly public campaign questioning President Obama’s citizenship and demanding the release of Obama’s birth certificate. Even if Trump didn’t meet the KGB standard for a target in the 1980s, he sure did now.
Ahead of the contest, in June, 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?
Some eighty-six Miss Universe contestants spent three weeks in Moscow. They saw Red Square and the Bolshoi Theatre. They visited the Agalarov estate, shot a round of golf there, and posed in bikinis. Trump arrived in Russia with his Las Vegas business partner, Phil Ruffin. After checking into the Ritz-Carlton, Trump had lunch with the Agalarovs.
The Miss Universe contest took place in Crocus City Mall. The VIPs watching from the balcony formed a microcosm of Putin’s Russia. They included Vladimir Kozhin, Putin’s aide; Leonid Fedun, the vice president of Lukoil; and Aleksey Mitrofanov, an outspoken nationalist deputy in the state Duma. Plus an alleged gangster, a vodka baron, a singer, and the boss of a state-connected media holding company.
Miss Venezuela, Maria Gabriela Isler, won. According to Kommersant, Trump spent the after-party talking to the Miss Universe contestants: “For every girl wearing a sash he found a special word, which he whispered in her ear amid the surrounding disco.”
Agalarov was in another VIP zone, talking to Kozhin, Putin’s representative, the paper reported. A few days before the pageant, Putin presented Agalarov with one of Russia’s highest civilian awards, the Order of Honor. Agalarov posed with Russia’s president. He looked pleased. The medal hung from a sky-blue ribbon.
Trump spent November 8 and 9 in Moscow. He didn’t manage to see Putin. (According to the Agalarovs, Putin sent Trump a friendly note.) A source told The Guardian’s Shaun Walker that a meeting with Trump had been penciled into Putin’s diary by aides. It fell off the schedule a few days before the event.
Trump did have dinner at the Agalarov-backed restaurant Nobu with a group of Russian businessmen, including Herman Gref, a former economics minister. Gref—the CEO of state-controlled Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank—described Trump as “very lively.” Trump had a “good attitude towards Russia,” Gref said.
It was the Agalarovs who became Trump’s new buddies. On November 9 Trump made an early-morning appearance in Emin’s latest music video. Trump reprised his Apprentice role, mock-firing Emin, who performed with Miss Universe models. The shoot took place at the Ritz-Carlton.
There was further talk of Trump’s long-unfulfilled project: a skyscraper in Moscow bearing his name. According to Emin, speaking to Forbes, the idea was to build a Trump Tower and an Agalarov Tower side by side. Back in New York, Trump tweeted:
I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!
But then Trump suddenly had bigger plans than a mere tower. After this trip he was running for president for real. The Agalarovs were enthusiastic supporters of his White House bid, as were other forces in Moscow.
The Agalarovs also knew things about Trump that could—allegedly—damage him very badly, were they to be released.
Steele’s dossier read:
AGALAROV…has been closely involved with TRUMP in Russia and would know most of the details of what the Republican presidential candidate had got up to there.
Birmingham is a city of browns and grays in the English West Midlands. From a concrete tower at its center one can see a metropolis that is industrial, unlovely, depressed. The Victorians had made Birmingham into a place of commerce and prosperity. But by the 1980s much of its heavy industry had vanished.
There was poverty, unemployment, and community tension—which, in the summer of 1981, flamed into race riots in the suburb of Handsworth, home to several ill-sorted ethnic communities. The police raided a pub; locals responded by looting and trashing property and hurling firebombs. Elsewhere, in Balsall Heath, for example, prostitution was rife. As was crime.
The tower belonged to the Birmingham Post and Mail, the city’s paper. Built in the 1960s, it was a modernist slab stuck on a podium. Below, cars, vans, and double-deckers streamed through Colmore Circus. The city’s economic woes and blight were a source of misery. But they provided plenty of fodder for the journalists working in the building’s open-plan office.
In 1983–1984 one of them was Rob Goldstone. Born in Manchester, and in his twenties, Goldstone was an easy-to-spot figure—charming, highly disorganized, and endlessly talkative, in the words of Owen Bowcott, a former Post and Mail colleague. “He was a lovely man, and cheerful. He would generate an enormous amount of chat. A motormouth. He could spout for Britain,” Bowcott said.
True, Goldstone looked as if he’d never seen the inside of a gym. But he had a gift for making contacts and an enthusiasm that made his subjects talk, open up. From Birmingham, he moved to London, working on Fleet Street tabloids and the celebrity beat. Then he became a music promoter and publicist, based in Sydney, London again, and New York.
One of his clients was Emin Agalarov. Agalarov’s sugary music career had never quite taken off outside Azerbaijan. This wasn’t really Goldstone’s fault. He was an assiduous representative. Goldstone plugged Emin’s tours on Facebook, promoted his European concerts, and celebrated Emin’s birthday with him in Baku.
Goldstone’s now-deleted Instagram profile reveals a luxurious lifestyle—fancy dinners, five-star hotels, cocktails, photos with a procession of young companions whom Goldstone dubbed “muppets.” There are numerous trips to Moscow. And a lot of Trump.
The publicist was heavily involved in organizing Miss Universe. In May 2013 he met the Miss Universe team. He returned to Moscow in September and attended the pageant through October and November, posting a photograph of himself in a garish tie. Goldstone met Trump.
In February 2014 he was back in Russia again, one of
five or six trips that year, this time with Ivanka Trump and Emin. The Agalarovs and the Trump kids became friends. In May 2015 Emin and Goldstone were back at Trump Tower; the tycoon and the singer posed with upturned thumbs. In March 2016 there was a dinner with Trump in Las Vegas.
In fact, Donald Trump, Jr., spent more time in Moscow than his father. He was an enthusiastic visitor—flying in repeatedly from 2006 onward. He attended a real estate conference in Russia two years later. Trump Jr. was at the Miss Universe pageant. He was meant to oversee Dad’s Moscow tower.
It was therefore logical that when Goldstone—in June 2016—needed to get in touch with Trump on a delicate matter he went via Trump Jr.
Goldstone sent him a series of emails.
On June 3, 2016, at 10:36 a.m., Goldstone wrote:
Good morning.
Emin just called me and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump—helped along by Aras and Emin.
What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?
I can also send this info to your father via Rhona [Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime assistant] but it is ultra-sensitive so I wanted to send it to you first.
Best
Rob Goldstone
The email was unequivocal. The Russian government was offering Trump damaging material on Clinton as part of its efforts to make Trump president. These “official documents” were arriving through the back door. Naturally enough, this operation was “sensitive.” In classic espionage fashion, the approach was done via intermediaries—a chain stretching from the Kremlin, to Russia’s prosecutor Yury Chaika, to the Agalarovs, to Goldstone, to Trump Jr., to the candidate himself.
