A Russian Developer Helps Out the Kremlin on Occasion. Was He a Conduit to Trump?

A Russian Developer Helps Out the Kremlin on Occasion. Was He a Conduit to Trump?

MOSCOW — Russian Island, near the port city of Vladivostok in the far east, was a decaying former military base and home to a scattering of cattle when President Vladimir V. Putin suddenly envisioned it as a $1.2 billion campus where he could welcome heads of state for an Asia-Pacific conference. That sent Kremlin officials scrambling to find a developer to transform a site lacking fresh water, a pier or roads. They rejected numerous bids before one of them took a flier on a man known mostly for his glamorous shopping malls: Aras Agalarov of the Crocus Group. A little more than three years later, in 2012, Mr. Putin opened the spectacular Far Eastern Federal University, some 70 modern buildings built in a crescent overlooking the sparkling Pacific Ocean. Not long after, Mr. Putin pinned a blue-ribboned state medal, the Order of Honor, on Mr. Agalarov’s chest at a dazzling Kremlin ceremony. Soon, a string of demanding, more prominent projects followed: a stretch of superhighway ringing Moscow; two troubled stadiums for the 2018 World Cup, including one in a Baltic swamp.

Mr. Agalarov, 61, also worked on a project with a future president, Donald J. Trump. Last week, the Russian developer and his crooner son and heir, Emin, were thrust into the swirl of speculation about whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election.

Their names popped up in emails about arranging a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who claimed to have incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, but the president and his son have both insisted that nothing of value was provided.

“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,” wrote Rob Goldstone, a music producer and publicist working for Emin.

The American attorney for the Algalarovs, Scott S. Balber, contradicted Mr. Goldstone’s version, asserting in an interview that the senior Mr. Algalorov’s role was merely a matter of an introduction. “People in the business world do favors for each other all the time. As a courtesy to a lawyer they had a relationship with, they made an introduction,” Mr. Balber said. “We were not in possession of damaging info. We had no reason to believe this was in relation to the Russian government.”

While there is no indication beyond what was said in the emails that the Agalarovs were serving as a conduit between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, wealthy and well-connected businessmen are often called on to do the bidding of the Russian government.

Kremlin analysts stress that its red, crenelated walls conceal not a well-oiled machine but a hornet’s nest of interests and influences competing to dominate an Erector Set of ad hoc policies and sudden opportunities, many of them highly lucrative.

When it comes to exploiting those opportunities, the Kremlin often ignores its own bureaucrats, diplomats and other agents in favor of someone it thinks will get the job done — a charmed group whose members rise and fall in status along with their usefulness to Mr. Putin and his top aides.

In that context, analysts find it entirely plausible that the Kremlin would tap Mr. Agalarov, a construction tycoon with a web of contacts to Mr. Trump, as a way to pass information to the Trump presidential campaign.

“In a sense, almost no one is a direct agent of the Kremlin, but almost anyone can become one if the need arises,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.

Aleksei A. Navalny, the leading opposition figure in Russia and an anticorruption campaigner, says he has no doubt that the Agalarovs would do the bidding of the Kremlin if asked.

In a blog post, Mr. Navalny refers to Yuri Chaika, the Russian state prosecutor — a position equivalent to the United States attorney general — whom Mr. Goldstone identified in his emails as the source of the information on offer at the Trump Tower meeting. Mr. Chaika, a staunch Putin loyalist, has been in that position since 2006.