Biker. Boxer. National Lottery czar. Business partner to Vladimir Putin’s chief bodyguard. And now: the man who helped pay for part of Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebration.
The winding career of Umar Kremlev is a distinctly Russian one, emerging from the murky backrooms of international boxing and the Russian security state.
But picking up the tab for a two-night, alcohol-soaked celebration in the Bahamas following the wedding of the US president’s son has now thrust the 43-year-old into the international spotlight. The move prompted calls for an investigation into the Russian tycoon and invited scrutiny about his ties to the Trump family.
A decade ago, he was riding with the Night Wolves, Russia’s notorious, Kremlin-aligned motorcycle club. Through a shared love of boxing and Harley-Davidsons, he struck up a relationship with Alexey Rubezhnoy, the elite counterterrorism officer tasked with Putin’s personal safety. With backing from the president’s inner circle, Kremlev was abruptly handed control of Russia’s National Lottery and its multi-billion-dollar sports betting monopoly.
Now, Kremlev is using the vast wealth generated by that betting empire — and the global access provided by his presidency of the International Boxing Association — to court Western political elites. His sudden generosity toward the Trumps has raised urgent questions about whether a mid-level proxy for Russia’s security establishment is running an influence operation right in the president’s backyard.
It’s a remarkable rise for Kremlev, who was born in the Moscow suburbs as Umar Lutfulloyev.
He trained as a teenage boxer before retiring at 19, according to his official biography, though he remained involved in the sport’s governance system after quitting competition.
Several outlets reported that he had criminal convictions for extortion and battery in his youth. (The IBA, then known as the AIBA, investigated the claims but cleared him after he produced Interior Ministry documents showing no prior record.) He became intrigued by biker culture, and cultivated ties to the Night Wolves, Russia’s best-known motorcycle club.
But the turning point in his life appears to be the friendship he forged with Rubezhnoy, a former officer in the Federal Security Service’s elite Alpha counterterrorism unit who now heads Russia’s Presidential Security Service and personally oversees Putin’s safety.
The two men met around 2010, according to investigative outlet Proekt, through their mutual connection with the Night Wolves. Members of the group have taken part in events alongside senior Russian officials, including Putin himself.
The pair are business partners, according to several people close to the Kremlin who requested anonymity to discuss unofficial matters. They may also be relatives, multiple people familiar with their relationship say. Two believe they have married into the same extended family.
Meteoric rise
Rubezhnoy opened the door into the lucrative world of Putin’s orbit and a rapid expansion of wealth and influence. At one point, Lutfulloyev even changed his surname to Kremlev, according to corporate disclosures, evoking the historic seat of Russian power where Putin works. Russian media have offered conflicting accounts of why he made the switch, with some reporting that it is his wife’s surname, while others identify it as his mother’s maiden name.
Kremlev’s reward has been growing influence and power not only in the sport he loves, but across a broad swath of Russian businesses. Russia’s corporate registry lists more than a dozen companies owned or previously managed by the burgeoning magnate, spanning from sports ventures, farming to real estate.
In 2017, Kremlev was chosen to lead the Russian Boxing Federation. In an interview that year with a sports television channel he owns, Kremlev said Rubezhnoy was the one who suggested he lead the Russian organization. In the same interview, he acknowledged his ties to the Night Wolves and said he owned a Harley Davidson and a Ducati.
Three years later, he became president of the IBA, a Lausanne-based body that oversees international boxing competitions and sets rules and standards for the sport.
Through boxing, Kremlev also gained access to another powerful backer, Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin ally and the head of oil giant Rosneft PJSC. Sechin and Rubezhnoy both sit at the top of the Russian Boxing Federation’s supervisory board.
“He is a mid-level businessman, not even second-tier figure in the Russian elite,” Alexander Gabuev, Berlin-based director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center said. “He gained his current opportunities because he represents the interests of people within the security establishment and other beneficiaries of the regime who need proxies — people who can hold assets and front their business interests.”
Putin the ‘mentor’
Kremlev isn’t personally close to Putin, according to people familiar with the relationship, but he is certainly an admirer of the Russian president. The tycoon’s Telegram channel contains multiple references and expressions of gratitude to the Russian president.
“For me personally, Vladimir Vladimirovich is a mentor and an example of the kind of person everyone should aspire to become. A strong leader, a reliable head of state, and simply a true Russian man,” Kremlev said in 2024.
In 2020, Putin awarded Kremlev the Medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland,” Second Class, a Russian state decoration recognizing service to the country.
More significantly, a company linked to Kremlev was chosen in 2019 to operate the National Lottery, according to Proekt .
And along with Rubezhnoy, he later gained control of the betting payments center that Putin designated in 2021 as the sole operator for bookmaker transactions across Russia, the outlet reported. People close to the Kremlin believe that the pair still control this business, though its official ownership structure hasn’t been publicly disclosed since 2022.
Russia’s betting industry has boomed in the past four and a half years, fueled by a shift toward legal online bets. Revenue at Fonbet, the country’s largest bookmaker and one of the biggest assets believed to be co-owned by Kremlev, has more than tripled since 2022 to 712 billion rubles ($8.3 billion) last year.
‘Considerable momentum’
In 2024, Kremlev also acquired Rolf, one of Russia’s largest car dealership groups, from the state property agency after the asset had been seized from its previous owner, an opposition-linked businessman who had left the country.
That business also surged, cashing in as the exodus of Western carmakers reshaped Russia’s auto market and Chinese brands rushed in to fill the gap. The company posted 218.6 billion rubles in revenue last year, more than a third above its 2022 level, while net income reached 1.6 billion rubles, according to its financial statements.
Kremlev may have access to stakes in the businesses which are worth at least $1.2 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates based on media reports and publicly disclosed data.
“Kremlev has gained considerable momentum recently. He has substantial financial resources,” said Yevgeny Minchenko, a political scientist who’s worked with the Kremlin.
Still, it wasn’t Kremlev’s wealth that brought him into Trump’s orbit, but sport. The pair first met through a mutual friend in hunting, according to Trump Jr.’s spokesman.
In 2025, the International Boxing Association issued a press release saying Trump Jr. and Kremlev planned to work together in “a turning point for global sport.”
“I am proud to call Umar not only a leader but a friend,” Trump. Jr. said.
Still, their relationship flew mostly under the radar — until ProPublica revealed that Kremlev had shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent a private island and put on a fireworks show following Trump Jr.’s marriage to fiancee Bettina.
The revelations set off a scramble of damage control by the White House. In a Instagram post, Bettina Trump said that the Bahamas getaway had “actually been planned well in advance as a fun weekend with friends.”
“It was never intended to be our wedding weekend. When our original wedding plans changed, we simply decided to get married before it and arrived at an already planned weekend as newlyweds,” she wrote. She added that there was “no conspiracy” and “no mystery,” and that “friendship doesn’t require a political motive.”
The US president later said that his son was repaying the Russian for the wedding party and downplayed the incident as “very common.”
Read more: Trump Says Son Will Repay Russian for Wedding Party
“I asked about it. He said, ‘No, I’m paying him back, Dad,’ so, and that was a while ago, so I heard he’s paying him,” Trump told reporters last month when asked about the controversy in the Oval Office.
A spokesperson for Trump Jr. said the president’s son paid back the full cost of the festivities last month, without confirming the amount. The spokesperson said that Trump Jr. has never had a business relationship with Kremlev. Spokespeople for Kremlev’s IBA, Rubezhnoy’s office and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to requests for comment.
On Tuesday, Kremlev downplayed the possible implications of the relationship during an IBA press conference and confirmed that Trump Jr. had repaid him for the party.
“What can I say about it?” he said. “This friendship is based on a shared interest in sports, traditional values and family values, and nothing more.”
Read more: Russian Tycoon Kremlev Says Trump Jr. Paid Back Wedding Tab ·
“He paid it back, but I didn’t understand why, because I don’t consider it some kind of special gift,” Kremlev told reporters in Istanbul on Tuesday. He also said he had not attended the wedding itself, but had joined other celebrations with mutual friends.
While the White House insists that the payment was not intended to buy influence, it has drawn bipartisan scrutiny on Capitol Hill. And experts say that even if the gift wasn’t explicitly sanctioned by Putin, the move was likely a way to score points with the Kremlin.
Read more: Republican Senator Calls for Investigation Into Trump Family
“Most likely the friendship and personal relationship with the Trump family are part of an operation to build networks of influence within Trump’s team and his broader orbit,” Gabuev from Carnegie said.
“The fact that, in the United States today, someone who is not even a second-tier figure in the Russian elite can finance the wedding of members of the president’s family of course speaks to the extent to which Russia may view Trump’s inner circle as a vast field for manipulation and influence operations.”