Tag: Vladimir Zlobin

Senior members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) met the wife of the Russian billionaire who allegedly gave financial support to a woman accused of being a secret agent for Moscow in the US. The NRA members met Svetlana Nikolaeva, who is the head of a gun company that supplies sniper rifles to the Russian military and intelligence services, during a trip to Moscow during the 2016 election campaign. Accused spy Maria Butina met with Russia's former US ambassador Read more Nikolaeva’s husband, Konstantin Nikolaev, allegedly provided funding to Maria Butina, a young Russian woman charged with carrying out an illicit spying operation in Washington. Nikolaev reportedly once invested in his wife’s gun company. US prosecutors allege Butina’s activities were directed by Alexander Torshin, a senior Russian state banker and an NRA member. Nikolaev has been involved in several business projects connected to allies of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Sacha Baron Cohen's scheme to arm toddlers isn't far from reality Read more Nikolaev has been named in several Russian media reports in recent years as an early investor in Orsis’s parent company. In December 2015, an NRA delegation including Pete Brownell, then the NRA’s first vice-president, and David Keene, a past NRA president, visited Russia for an expedition partly funded by Right to Bear Arms, a Russian pro-gun group run by Butina with help from Torshin, her alleged government handler. Rogozin’s son was previously an executive at Orsis. The Guardian disclosed earlier this month that a former chief of staff to Putin had a previously unreported investment in American Ethane.