Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation Trump’s social media company went public relying partly on loans from trust managed by person of interest to prosecutors Wed 3 Apr 2024
Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.
The former US president stands to gain billions of dollars – his stake is currently valued at about $4bn – from the merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which took the parent company of Truth Social public.
But Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.
The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.
Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.
The existence of the trust has previously been reported by the Guardian and the Washington Post. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.
The new details about the trust are drawn from documents including: Paxum Bank records showing Postolnikov having access to the trust’s account, the papers that created the trust showing as its settlor a lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, and three years of the trust’s financial transactions.
The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not.
Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.
Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime. In response to an email to Postolnikov seeking comment, a lawyer in Dominica representing Paxum Bank warned of legal action for reporting the contents of the leaked documents.
Donald Trump May Be Facing Another Russia-Linked Scandal Published Jan 25, 2024
A Russian-American bank owner with ties to the pornography industry and Russian President Vladimir Putin has allegedly profited from an insider trading scheme involving Donald Trump's media company, court documents show.
Anton Postolnikov, 41, is suspected of earning nearly $23 million from alleged insider trading that involved the former president's Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of TRUTH Social.
Postolnikov is reportedly the nephew of Aleksander Smirnov, a former deputy minister of justice in Russia who worked in President Vladimir Putin's executive office for an unknown amount of time up to 2017. He also owns the Dominican bank Paxum that is involved with the porn industry, according to the Miami Herald. He has not been charged with any wrongdoing, but FBI search warrant applications have shown he had a relationship with three defendants in a New York securities fraud case.
