According to written testimony presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee this week, the head of the Russian state investment bank VEB presented Kushner with a gift: art, along with a “bag of dirt,” from Kushner’s ancestral village in the former Russian imperial territory of Belarus. It was an unusual present, from an unusual figure in the ongoing Trump-Russia saga — one unlike most Russian bureaucrats.

Just over a year ago, shortly after becoming the head of VEB, Gorkov held a private event for his new staff. The banker staged a gathering that, according to those who have met him, reflected his personality: modern, nontraditional, and with an altogether different guest list from the typically buttoned-up sorts of people that fill the ranks of Russian banking and government. According to a news report, and some who were in attendance, the bank hired musicians who belted out 1980s Russian classics celebrating change, such as the perestroika hit “Peremen!” or “Changes!” — the song by rock legend Viktor Tsoi, often associated with the collapse of the Soviet order. Gorkov also flew in a limbless Australian Christian evangelical, Nick Vujicic, in order to deliver a motivational speech. Afterward, the company screened a short film, heralding what it said was a new era at the bank and the end of “feudal” bureaucracy — quite a departure from ordinary Russian state apparatchiks, who tend not to question the rigid structures by which they work.

Gorkov and VEB, or Vnesheconombank, came to the world’s attention earlier this year when it was reported that Gorkov had met for just under half an hour with Kushner, the son-in-law and senior advisor to President Donald Trump, not long after Trump secured the presidency. That December meeting is now under scrutiny from both Congress and the Justice Department, as part of their investigations into the Trump campaign’s links to Russian officials.

The White House and VEB have different versions of what went down in the meeting. In the testimony presented this week, Kushner said he’d taken the meeting because he was told Gorkov was someone “with a direct line to the Russian president who could give insight into how Putin was viewing the new administration and best ways to work together”; Kushner said specific policies were not discussed. VEB, meanwhile, has described the meeting as part and parcel of its own development strategy. The bank was hit with U.S. economic sanctions as a result of Russia’s role in the Ukraine crisis and its 2014 annexation of Crimea and is keen to see them lifted. It remains unclear what was actually discussed for those 20-25 minutes, the time frame later given by Kushner, that day. VEB declined to respond to questions and said Gorkov did not have time in his schedule for an interview.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3900310&forum_id=2#35459513)

On December 13, 2016, Jared Kushner held a secret meeting with Gorkov that first came to light three months later. The White House and VEB have given conflicting explanations as to why the two men connected, with the former claiming it was a “routine diplomatic encounter that went nowhere” and the latter saying Gorkov met with Kushner as the head of Kushner Companies, his family’s real estate organization. The Kremlin claims no involvement.

In a written statement released just prior to his first meeting with Congressional investigators, Kushner insisted he held the 20 to 25 minute meeting with Gorkov on behalf of the transition team and not as a representative of his own business. He claimed the two discussed “no specific policies, “ “had no discussion about the sanctions,” and discussed nothing to do with Kushner’s “companies, business transactions, real estate projects, loans, banking arrangements or any private business of any kind.”

Gorkov’s bank made news again on April 5, 2017 when US officials deported a Russian spy named Evgeny Buryakov who had been posing as a high-ranking official with VEB’s Manhattan office.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3900310&forum_id=2#35462536)