US senators have asked a Russian oligarch if he worked with the former MI6 officer behind the the dossier containing salacious allegations about Donald Trump.
Senator Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, has written to Oleg Deripaska’s London-based lawyers to formally ask whether him if his client has worked with Christopher Steele.
The allegation were made in a series of private memos before the 2016 election and included that Mr Trump asked prostitutes to perform a lurid act while in Russia.
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US senators have asked a lawyer representing Oleg Deripaska (left) about the oligarch’s relationship with Christopher Steele (right)
The President branded the dossier ‘a pile of garbage’ calling it a ‘tainted’ document that the FBI must not use as a basis for investigation.
Deripaska is known in the UK for once hosting Lord Mandelson and George Osborne on his yacht.
In his letter to lawyer Paul Hauser, which was sent last month, Mr Grassley asks whether there are any links between him, Deripaska and Steele, the Telegraph reported.
He asked in the letter ‘have you ever hired or otherwise worked with Mr. Christopher Steele?’ or his companies and continues ‘if so, when, and what was the nature of the arrangement?’.
Sen. Chuck Grassley has demanded to know from London-based lawyer Paul Hauser if Deripaska has employed Steele
‘Is it the case that Mr. Steele, through you, works or has worked on behalf of Mr. Deripaska or businesses associated with him? If so, when has such work occurred?,’ Sen. Grassley wrote.
‘Are you otherwise aware of any business or financial relationships between Mr. Steele and Russian government officials, Russian oligarchs, or Russian businesses?’
Steele’s 35-page dossier claims that Russia collected a file of compromising information on Trump including sex tapes with which to blackmail him.
He was initially hired by a US political research firm FusionGPS by Republicans who wanted to stop Trump’s campaign to win the Republican nomination for the 2016 election.
But he was kept on by Fusion GPS even after Trump won the nomination and his information was passed to the Democratic Party.
Steele, 53, runs two companies Orbis Business International and Orbis Intelligence Limited with business partner Charles Burrows, 59.
Orbis Intelligence saw its retained profits more than double from £199,000 to £441,089 last year.
At the beginning of this month the Judiciary Committee released a heavily redacted document in which Republicans claim Steele gave the FBI a second memo about the president’s Russia contacts.
This week senior White House aide now says the President will release the House Intelligence Committee memo.
President Donald Trump originally declined to approve releasing the memo in its current form on the grounds it contains sensitive information – after a week earlier allowing the release of a classified Republican-drafted memo.
He approved the release of the Republican memo on the same topic, a document that alleged FBI abuses as it looked into any connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Who is Oleg Deripaska? The billionaire oligarch with links to Putin and Trump’s shamed campaign manager
Oleg Deripaska, who is said to be a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is considered one of Russia ‘s wealthiest men.
Born in 1968 in the city of Dzerzhinsk, some 250 miles east of Moscow, Deripaska attended the School of Physics at Moscow State University before graduating from Moscow’s School of Economics at Plekhanov Academy of Economics.
He went on to establish himself in the domestic metals industry and in 2008, Forbes magazine listed Deripaska as the ninth-richest man in the world, worth about $28 billion.
Controversial: Russian oligarch and billionaire Oleg Deripaska has many powerful friends in politics
But when the financial crisis hit he almost went bankrupt before bouncing back – with the help of the Kremlin, according to some reports.
In 2016, Forbes ranked Deripaska as Russia’s 41st wealthiest man.
He hit the headlines in 2017 when he was found to have ties with Paul Manfort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman.
A report claimed $26million was transferred from Oguster Management Ltd – a company owned by Deripaska – to Yiakora Ventures Ltd – entities linked to Manafort.
Manafort denied that any business he did with Deripaska a decade ago was related to helping the Russian government.
British peer Lord Mandelson is also an intimate friend of Deripaska, having in 2005 famously joined him in a ‘Banya’ — a traditional sauna in which they were thrashed with bunches of birch twigs by a 25-year-old man, before jumping into freezing water.
Deripaska also hosted Lord Mandelson on his super-yacht, where the pair holidayed alongside Nat Rothschild, then shadow chancellor George Osborne and Tory fund-raiser Andrew Feldman in Corfu in 2008.