Type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Investment |
Founded | 2000 |
Founder | Andrew Intrater |
Headquarters | , U.S. |
Key people | Andrew Intrater (CEO) |
Website | columbusnova.com |
Columbus Nova is an investment company founded in 2000 by Andrew Intrater, who serves as the company's chief executive officer and is cousin to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. [1] [2]
On September 17, 2013, online music service Rhapsody International announced that it would accept a "significant" investment of an undisclosed amount from Columbus Nova Technology Partners. [3] At the same time, it was announced that Rhapsody president Jon Irwin would step down and the company would lay off some of its workers. [4]
Former senior managing partner Jason Epstein also owns Daybreak Game Company, Harmonix, the makers of Guitar Hero , whom he bought from Viacom in December 2010. [5] [6]
In 2015, Columbus Nova made large investments in Chairman Benny Gantz's Fifth Dimension, a real time predictive analysis firm used by security agencies. [7] Fifth Dimension was founded in 2014 by deputy Chairman of the Board Doron Cohen. [7] Late in 2018, Fifth Dimension ceased its operations. [8]
In 2017, Mother Jones reported that Andrew Intrater donated $250,000 to Trump's inauguration fund and $35,000 to a joint fundraising committee for Trump's re-election and the Republican National Committee. [9]
According to The Washington Post , "Columbus Nova has been described in federal regulatory filings as an affiliate of the Renova Group, founded by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg". The sanctioned Russian company Renova Group, itself controlled by Vekselberg, also subject to U.S. sanctions, has previously listed Columbus Nova as an affiliate investment manager under the Renova Group's umbrella. [10] Per regulations administered by the United States Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), companies that are at least 50% owned by sanctioned individuals or companies are themselves subject to U.S. sanctions. [11] Columbus Nova stated that, while Renova Group had been their largest client, they had never been part of Renova Group, and had been "100 percent owned by U.S. citizen" since its inception. [12] [13]
On May 8, 2018, The New York Times reported that during 2017 Columbus Nova made payments of at least $500,000 to a bank account maintained by Michael Cohen, then acting as President Donald Trump's personal attorney. [14] However, the sanctions against Renova Group were not put in place until April 6, 2018, [15] so even if Columbus Nova were subject to sanctions due to its ownership structure, payments from Vekselberg to Donald Trump (via Cohen) would not have been expressly prohibited by OFAC at the time the payments were made. [16] Subsequent reporting by The New York Times noted that the Muller report did not name Intrater or Vekselberg and quoted Intrater as saying, "The fact that I’m not even mentioned in the Mueller report confirms what I knew all along — that I’ve done nothing wrong." [17]
As reported in The New York Times, on July 1, 2019, Intrater and his Columbus Nova entity sued the United States Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) claiming that OFAC's "50% rule" - whereby any property owned 50% or more by a sanctioned person is itself subject to sanctions also known as blocking - is unconstitutional as applied to Americans who have an interest in such property. [17] The New York Times article also noted that "If successful, the lawsuit could break new legal ground. Carlton Greene, a former senior Treasury official who worked in the office overseeing investigations into sanctions violations and is now a partner at Crowell & Moring, said past lawsuits had raised Fourth Amendment issues but none made it a central argument. "I think a Fourth Amendment argument for property blocked in the U.S., for a party with constitutional rights, is an argument that the government would have to take seriously," Greene said. [17]
Viktor Felixovich Vekselberg is a Ukrainian-born Russian–Cypriot oligarch, billionaire, and businessman. He is the owner and president of Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate. According to Forbes, as of November 2021, his fortune is estimated at $9.3 billion, making him the 262nd richest person in the world.
Daybreak Game Company LLC is an American video game developer based in San Diego. The company was founded in December 1997 as Sony Online Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment, but was spun off to an independent investor in February 2015 and renamed Daybreak Game Company. On December 1, 2020, Daybreak Game Company entered into an agreement to be acquired by Enad Global 7.
Sulzer Ltd.[ˈzʊlt͡sɐ] is a Swiss industrial engineering and manufacturing firm, founded by Salomon Sulzer-Bernet in 1775 and established as Sulzer Brothers Ltd. in 1834 in Winterthur, Switzerland. Today it is a publicly traded company with about 180 manufacturing facilities and service centers around the world. The company's shares are listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange.
Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska is a Russian billionaire and an industrialist. Deripaska enriched himself on previously state-owned assets that were privatized in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is the founder of Basic Element, one of Russia's largest industrial groups, and Volnoe Delo, Russia's largest charitable foundation. He was the president of En+ Group, a Russian energy company, and headed United Company Rusal, the second-largest aluminium company in the world, until he quit both roles in 2018.
Sir Leonard Valentinovich Blavatnik is a British-American business magnate and philanthropist of Ukrainian Jewish origin. As of March 2022, Forbes listed Blavatnik's wealth as $35.4 billion, making him somewhere between the 20th- and 33rd-richest person in the world. In 2017, Blavatnik received a knighthood for services to philanthropy.
Petr Olegovich Aven is a Russian oligarch, businessman, economist and politician who also holds Latvian citizenship. Until March 2022 he headed Alfa-Bank, Russia's largest commercial bank. In March 2022, he resigned from the board of directors at Alfa-Bank and LetterOne Group to help them avoid sanctions. In 2022 he was named the 665th richest person in the world, with a net worth of around $4.7 billion.
Gennady Nikolayevich Timchenko is a Russian oligarch and billionaire businessman. He founded and owns the private investment firm Volga Group. Previously he was a co-owner of Gunvor Group.
Renova Group is a Russian conglomerate with interests in aluminium, oil, energy, telecoms and a variety of other sectors. The main owner and president is Viktor Vekselberg who founded the company in 1990.
International sanctions have been imposed during the Russo-Ukrainian War by a large number of countries, including the United States, Canada, and the European Union against Russia and Crimea following the Russian annexation of Crimea, which began in late February 2014. Belarus has also been sanctioned for its cooperation with and assistance to Russian armed forces. The sanctions were imposed by the United States, among other countries and international organisations against individuals, businesses and officials from Russia, and Ukraine. Russia responded with sanctions against several countries, including a total ban on food imports from Australia, Canada, Norway, Japan, the United States and the EU.
Elliott B. Broidy is an American venture capitalist and businessman. From 2005 to 2008, he served as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). In 2009, he was convicted in a public corruption and bribery case in New York.
Michael Dean Cohen is an American lawyer who served as an attorney for U.S. president Donald Trump from 2006 to 2018. Cohen was a vice-president of the Trump Organization, and the personal counsel to Trump, and was often described by media as Trump's "fixer". He served as co-president of Trump Entertainment and was a board member of the Eric Trump Foundation, a children's health charity. From 2017 to 2018, Cohen was deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Donald Trump has pursued business deals in Russia since 1987, and has sometimes traveled there to explore potential business opportunities. In 1996, Trump trademark applications were submitted for potential Russian real estate development deals. Trump's partners and children have repeatedly visited Moscow, connecting with developers and government officials to explore joint venture opportunities. Trump was never able to successfully conclude any real estate deals in Russia. However, individual Russians have invested heavily in Trump properties, and following Trump's bankruptcies in the 1990s he borrowed money from Russian sources. In 2008 his son Donald Trump Jr. said that Russia was an important source of money for the Trump businesses.
This is a timeline of events related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
The Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) is a United States federal law that imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea, and Russia. The bill was passed by the Senate on 27 July 2017, 98–2, after it passed the House 419–3. The bill was signed into law on 2 August 2017 by President Donald Trump, who stated that he believed the legislation was "seriously flawed".
On January 12, 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that in October 2016, just before the 2016 United States presidential election, Michael Cohen, lawyer for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, arranged a payment of $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to stop her disclosing an affair she alleged they had in 2006. Daniels had signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). At first, Cohen denied Trump had the alleged affair and sought to suppress the allegation based on the NDA, but a month later publicly acknowledged making the payment.
Konstantin Viktorovich Kilimnik is a Russian/Ukrainian political consultant. In the United States, he became a person of interest in multiple investigations regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, particularly due to his ties with Paul Manafort, an American political consultant, who was a campaign chairman for Donald Trump.
This is a timeline of events in the first half of 2019 related to investigations into links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials that are suspected of being inappropriate, relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, both before and after July 2016, until November 8, 2016, the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and followed by the second half of 2019, 2020, and 2021.
This is a chronology of significant events in 2016 and 2017 regarding links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials during the Trump presidential transition, relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Following the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016, this article begins on November 8 and ends with Donald Trump and Mike Pence being sworn into office on January 20, 2017. The investigations continued in the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, the first and second halves of 2019, 2020, and 2021.
Task Force KleptoCapture is a United States Department of Justice unit established in March 2022 with the goal of enforcing sanctions on Russian oligarchs in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The United States's stance on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has been in favor of Ukraine, with the country condemning the invasion, providing humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine, and sanctioning Russia and Belarus, the countries heavily involved in invading Ukraine.