Model gives Trump info to tycoon
A Belarusian model who claims to have information on ties between Russia and United States President Donald Trump’s election campaign says she has turned that material over to Russian billionaire businessman Oleg Deripaska.
Anastasia Vashukevich fuelled speculation around possible ties between Trump and the Kremlin last year when she posted a video from a police van, saying she had 16 hours of audio and video proving ties between Russian officials and the Trump campaign that influenced the 2016 US presidential election.
Deripaska denied the allegations, and even went to court to seek to remove the video Vashukevich posted, in which he discusses US-Russia ties with a senior Russian government official.
Vashukevich, 28, also known as Nastya Rybka, returned to Russia last month almost a year after she was detained in Thailand on charges of soliciting sex, in what some believe was an attempt to silence her.
She said yesterday that, contrary to earlier reports that she had destroyed the recordings, she had given them to Deripaska because it ‘‘relates to him’’ and that she ‘‘did not want any more trouble’’.
Vashukevich rose to prominence in February last year when Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny published an investigation detailing dealings between Deripaska and Sergei Prikhodko, then Russia’s deputy prime minister, who played a prominent role in shaping Russia’s foreign policy.
Navalny drew on Vashukevich’s video from mid-2016, when Deripaska was hosting Prikhodko on his yacht and was caught on tape saying that relations between Russia and the US were bad because of then-US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland.
Deripaska is close to Putin and also had a working relationship with Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. Manafort was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of the probe into the 2016 election and was convicted last year of tax and bank fraud.
Vashukevich had indicated that she would turn over the recordings she claimed to have if the US could help to secure her release from jail in Thailand.
She later withdrew the offer, suggesting that she and Deripaska had reached an agreement.
She initially blamed Russia for her incarceration and said she feared for her life. In April, however, she changed her tune and said it was the US Government that was persecuting her, not Russia.
Vashukevich said yesterday she had emailed ‘‘everything I had’’ to Deripaska. She dodged a question about whether she had kept copies for herself.
She credited Vladimir Pronin, Russia’s newly appointed consul in Pattaya, for securing her release from the Thai prison and her deportation. She has kept a low profile since her release. –AP