Why did Blackwater founder Erik Prince meet Russian fund boss in Seychelles bar? Not as Trump’s secret envoy, he says
‘I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Joseph Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism’
Blackwater Security founder Erik Prince told US House lawmakers conducting the Russia probe that he discussed US trade policy with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian government’s investment fund in January, but insisted he wasn’t operating as a back-channel for the incoming Trump administration.
Prince, chairman of the Hong-Kong-based Frontier Services Group, said he knew Dmitriev was a Russian fund manager, but didn’t realise that the Russian government controlled it and that it had been sanctioned by the US since 2015 due to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
That meeting has drawn the attention of congressional committees looking into potentially improper contacts between the Trump campaign and transition team with Russians, and sparked questions about whether Prince may have been an unofficial envoy on behalf of Trump or his associates.
Prince, a former US Navy SEAL and the brother of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, denied that. He told the committee he had travelled to the Seychelles nine days before Trump’s inauguration to meet with some potential business customers from the United Arab Emirates.
During that meeting, he said, those potential customers simply “mentioned a guy who I should also meet who was also in town.”
He recounted meeting Dmitriev at a hotel bar, where they discussed topics ranging from oil to commodity prices. He also said that Dmitriev discussed how much his country wished to resume normal trade relations with the US.
“I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Joseph Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism,” said Prince.