Until March 2010, the name of Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, now 43, meant nothing to anyone. The former aspiring boxer, who years later would pay for a lavish wedding party following the wedding of US President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, in the Bahamas, was then called Umar Lutfulloev.

By the time he turned 28, he reportedly already had convictions for extortion and assault. His hopes of a boxing career had collapsed for lack of discipline, and he wanted a fresh start and a way up the ladder of Russian society.

For that, he could hardly have chosen a better surname than Kremlev, which in effect means “the Kremlin’s man”. Like the name Trump Jr, it was one destined to be tied to fame, wealth and controversy.

The link between the two men emerged when it was revealed that Kremlev had spent at least $170,000 on hiring a private island and staging a fireworks show as part of the celebrations for Trump Jr’s marriage to Bettina Anderson.

Congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, asked the obvious question: “What did he get in return? We need answers.” The newlyweds were quick to respond. “Friendship doesn’t require political motives. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is just a wedding gift,” they said, before offering to return the money.

The US President has since said his son has repaid Kremlev, adding that such gestures are common at weddings. Congressional Democrats have opened an inquiry into the payment, while US Attorney General Todd Blanche has said he has no plans to investigate.

That may not be the whole story, however. According to an investigation by the Telegraph, the relationship between the two men runs much deeper, and Kremlev appears to have had a clear goal in mind.

Kremlev grew up in Serpukhov, a city of about 120,000 people, 60 miles south of Moscow and 5,729 miles east of Little Pipe Cay, the Bahamian island he rented for the US president’s son. Born to a Tajik mother in a Muslim family, he embraced the role of outsider from the start.

He took up boxing as a boy but has admitted in an interview that he quit at 19 because he lacked the necessary discipline. Even on the day of a fight, he could be found in a nightclub at 4am. With big hands and the build of a heavyweight, Kremlev spent the next few years searching for a path that suited him. He stayed in the boxing world, working as a fight promoter.

According to the Russian investigative outlet Proekt, he was convicted of extortion in 2004 and of assault in 2007, although the exact circumstances of both cases remain unclear. Kremlev has not denied the convictions.

After changing his name, one of his first stops was the Night Wolves, a leather-clad motorcycle brotherhood famous for its Harley-Davidson rides across Russia, whose members appear with nationalist flags and Orthodox crosses. By then, Kremlev had also changed his religion.

The Night Wolves emerged during perestroika, the economic restructuring of the 1980s, as a group of bikers and rock music fans. They were led by Alexander Zaldostanov, known as “the Surgeon”, a close friend of Putin.

It was in this motley world that Kremlev began cultivating the connections that would turn him from boxer into a powerful figure in Russian society. The most important was with Alexei Rubezhny, a major general in the Federal Protective Service (FSO), which guards senior state officials. The two became inseparable.

By 2016, Rubezhny was head of the Presidential Security Service, which gave Kremlev access to Putin. His career took off from there.

He rose quickly through the ranks and in 2017 took over as head of the Russian Boxing Federation. But his appetite had been whetted, and it was far from satisfied. The International Boxing Association (AIBA) was then in deep crisis, facing corruption allegations that led in 2019 to its initial suspension from the Olympics as the body responsible for Olympic boxing.

Kremlev promised sweeping reforms and to clear a debt estimated at $16m, with the aim of winning back control of Olympic boxing for the organisation. In 2020 he won the presidency comfortably, despite speaking little or no English. As he had done with himself, he reset the organisation by changing its name, to the International Boxing Association (IBA).

A partnership with Gazprom, the Russian state energy giant, followed. The debt was wiped out and prize money rose. “Why shouldn’t amateur boxers be able to pay their mortgages and support their families?” Kremlev said at the time.

In 2022, the IBA lifted restrictions imposed earlier that year and allowed Russian and Belarusian boxers to compete under their national flags and anthems, while expelling the Ukrainian Boxing Federation. The following year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted, citing Russia’s war in Ukraine, to strip the IBA of its status as the sport’s world governing body.

Kremlev becomes the “shadow mayor”

It was not only Kremlev’s boxers who were paid well. In 2019, a company of his won the right to become sole operator of Russia’s national lottery. In a pattern that would be repeated several times, the lottery soon became a sponsor of the IBA.

Over the following years, Kremlev acquired stakes in three of Russia’s biggest betting firms: Fonbet, Liga Stavok and Pari. Russian media have reported that the deals had the backing of Andrei Kostin, the sanctioned financier and chairman of the Kremlin-linked VTB bank, who has been described as Putin’s “piggy bank banker”.

The firms appear to have had combined revenues of about 625bn roubles (£5.5bn) in 2023, and Liga Stavok is now a key partner of the IBA.

Kremlev also gradually took control of Tsupis, a payments company that links players with betting firms and takes a commission on every bet. In 2021, Putin signed an anti-fraud decree that handed Tsupis a monopoly on this highly lucrative activity. Around the same time, the bodies regulating the betting market also came under Kremlev’s control and were merged into a single oversight organisation, with several board members reportedly drawn from his network in the boxing world.

In his home town of Serpukhov, as he became an oligarch, Kremlev earned the nickname “the shadow mayor” after amassing an impressive property portfolio. Some of it is said to have come to him after the redistribution of assets belonging to the jailed former mayor, Alexander Shestun.

Sources say he acquired farmland, industrial sites, a port, a shopping centre and a hotel, and in 2024 Kremlev is also reported to have benefited from an expropriation. In February, the Kremlin seized Rolf, Russia’s largest car dealership group, from its exiled owner Sergei Petrov, a former opposition MP. By September it had passed to Kremlev in a deal worth 35bn roubles.

In a statement, Rolf introduced Kremlev as its new owner, describing him as a “strategic investor who will allow the company to preserve its unique corporate culture and broaden its range of activities, with an emphasis on greater efficiency and attracting new partners and customers”.

One of those new partners, according to later reports by Proekt, was the IBA.

Loyalty to Putin

Kremlev has amassed a personal fortune estimated at up to £300m and holds other posts, including the presidency of the International Backgammon Federation. He has never hidden his political sympathies.

“Thanks to one man, there are truly all kinds of opportunities today to make money and pursue more,” he said in a filmed interview in 2024, which was spotted by the Guardian. “That man, of course, is our president, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”

A few months later, Ukraine imposed sanctions on him. He is not, however, under sanctions from Britain, the US or the European Union.

In April, Putin awarded Kremlev the Order of Friendship. Days before Trump Jr’s wedding, Kremlev accompanied the Russian president on a visit to China, insisting he was not there in any official capacity.

The family benefits

As is often the case with the families of powerful and wealthy patriarchs, Kremlev’s relatives appear to have gained from his rise. In 2024, Russia’s Novaya Gazeta reported that he had given his wife, Anastasia Leshchinskaya, then 21, a barbershop and a cafe in Serpukhov, as well as luxury cars. The Porsche, Lamborghini and Aston Martin she is said to own have reportedly collected about 50 fines from Moscow region traffic police, in flagrant disregard of the rules.

Leshchinskaya was a well-known TikTok creator and one half of the duo “twinsrussian”.

It is her twin sister who has attracted even more attention. Ekaterina Leshchinskaya runs the pro-Putin organisation Healthy Fatherland, a sporting and patriotic movement that Kyiv has sanctioned over its alleged role in the abduction, deportation and forced transfer of children from Ukraine. She has also met the Russian president repeatedly.

It was apparently this very link between Trump Jr and Kremlev that prompted First Lady Melania Trump, who has mediated in deals with Russian officials over the return of Ukrainian children, to distance herself from her stepson’s wedding. A spokesperson said: “Mrs Trump does not have, and never has had, any relationship with Mr Kremlev.”

How Trump Jr came to know Kremlev is unclear

Trump Jr, however, does. Exactly how the president’s son entered Kremlev’s circle remains unclear. A spokesperson for Trump Jr said the two men, both keen hunters, met through a mutual friend and “bonded over their love of boxing and the outdoors”.

Trump Jr has also been around boxing since childhood, because his father promoted fights. At the age of 10, he watched Mike Tyson demolish Michael Spinks in just 91 seconds at the Trump Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City.

The mutual friend has not been named, but both men are close to a Turkish businessman, Kaan Karakaya. Karakaya is reported to have been present on a controversial hunting trip to Mongolia in 2019, during which Trump Jr shot and killed an endangered sheep.

In September last year, at an IBA event in Istanbul attended by eight-division world champion Manny Pacquiao, Kremlev announced Karakaya’s appointment as the organisation’s representative in Turkey.

“Kaan has been a bridge between different worlds, a friend who brings people together,” Kremlev said.

“Leader and friend”

Trump Jr attended the same IBA event and sat next to Kremlev on stage. The two men already appeared to have a friendly relationship, despite the Russian’s limited English. In a particularly warm tribute, Kremlev said he was “proud to be here with my friend” and promised that he and Trump Jr would “protect transparency in boxing and pave the way for the next generation”.

For his part, Trump Jr praised Kremlev for having “restored the purity of boxing” and “brought back real fairness” to the sport, an apparent reference to the IBA policy of not allowing biological men to compete in women’s boxing. “I’m proud to call Umar not only a leader but a friend,” he said, according to an IBA press release headlined “Umar Kremlev and Donald Trump Jr join forces”.

His position on boxer Imane Khelif

The IBA came under even greater international scrutiny during the 2024 Paris Olympics, which created an opportunity Kremlev could exploit.

At the Games, the IOC ran its own boxing unit to stage the tournament, as the IBA had already been expelled. The competition became the focus of fierce controversy when Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was allowed to fight in the women’s 66kg category, despite having been disqualified from the previous year’s World Championships after failing gender eligibility tests.

While Kremlev’s IBA had barred Khelif from its events, the IOC let her compete at the Olympics on the basis that her passport lists her as female. An international row followed, with Khelif winning all her bouts unanimously and taking the gold medal.

“It is clearly defined: women’s sport is for women, men’s sport is for men. Women’s sport is for women,” Kremlev told TalkSPORT. He took the message to the highest level, sending an open letter of 1,100 words to Donald Trump, who had recently signed an executive order barring trans women from competing in women’s sport.

In the letter, Kremlev wrote: “It is vital that all athletes compete on a level playing field, and your position on the issue is an important step towards that goal.” He also attacked the IOC, saying: “The International Olympic Committee and its current leadership have, regrettably, led the Olympic movement into decline through their short-sighted actions and poor governance.”

Kremlev also dangled another incentive in front of the president. “The last IBA World Boxing Championships in the United States took place in 2007 in Chicago. We are very interested in bringing the event back to your country and are more than ready to work together towards that end,” he wrote. He closed the letter by borrowing two of Trump’s favourite phrases: “Thank you for your attention to these important matters. We look forward with great optimism to the possibility of working together to make the Olympic movement great again, to advance the sport of boxing and to defend the rights of athletes around the world.”

The clash with the Saudis

In 2025, the IBA stepped up a gear. According to the Telegraph, in Istanbul Kremlev’s team offered British boxer Tyson Fury £50m to fight at one of the IBA’s events. Fury instead chose to sign a three-fight deal with Turki al-Sheikh, a Saudi government official.

Kremlev is, in effect, the most powerful promoter in the sport in Eastern Europe, and a direct challenge to the influence of Al-Sheikh and the Saudis in boxing and to their control of some of its biggest fights.

People in the boxing world describe Kremlev as “a charismatic personality who turns up at events surrounded by a large group of associates, almost like a head of state”. His speeches are often emotional and forceful, with repeated references to how boxing can change the lives of young people.

“He often has no particular expression on his face, and yet he exudes a politeness and a humility,” said one person from the sport.

Last summer, the IBA also launched its own bare-knuckle boxing championship. The first fights took place in Moscow, but it was the US debut in Miami this summer that drew attention.

The event was co-hosted by Andrew Tate, the British former kickboxer and self-described misogynist, who never made it on stage because he was arrested outside the venue. Tate and his brother Tristan face extradition to Britain, where they are charged with a total of 59 offences, including rape, human trafficking offences linked to sexual exploitation, and indecent images of a child. Both deny any wrongdoing.

A taste for the World Cup and the White House UFC event

Two other events this summer appear to have inspired Kremlev more: the Fifa World Cup under president Gianni Infantino, and UFC Freedom 250, staged by UFC president Dana White in a garden at the White House.

“Kremlev saw how Dana and Infantino managed to get what they wanted,” said one sports industry figure. “He wants a piece of that pie too.”

“And having access to Don Jr is a good start,” the same source added.

Perhaps he overstepped, and is now paying for it

In trying to secure a dominant position in world sport, Kremlev may have overreached. The organisation he leads is nowhere near regaining control of Olympic boxing, as the rift with the IOC cannot be bridged, and the damage caused by his “extremely generous wedding gift”, as Mr and Mrs Trump Jr described it, appears to weigh mainly on him.

Only about 50 people were on the Bahamian island, yet Kremlev arrived with a large group of Russians who kept to themselves and spoke among themselves, according to ProPublica. Their presence and behaviour puzzled other guests.

A group photograph was then taken, in which Kremlev’s shaven head can be seen half hidden at the back, while Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Tiffany Trump and others stand at the centre.

“What was he thinking?” a figure from Russian oligarch circles told the Telegraph. “He’s a thug who managed to get on the right side of the president and got over-excited.”

Melania Trump was the first to distance herself. Then a spokesperson for Eric Trump, Trump Jr’s brother, said of Kremlev: “Eric has absolutely no idea who this man is and has never heard his name.” The final blow came from Donald Trump himself: “I have no idea who Umar is. I’ve never heard of him.”