Rinat Rafkatovitch Akhmetshin is a Russian-American lobbyist and a former Soviet counterintelligence officer.
18 Facts About Rinat Akhmetshin
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Rinat Akhmetshin came to American media spotlight in July 2017 as a registered lobbyist for an organization run by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who, along with him, had a meeting with Donald Trump's election campaign officials in June 2016.
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Rinat Akhmetshin moved to the United States in 1994 to study biochemistry.
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Rinat Akhmetshin has been tied to lobbying for political opposition to Kazakhstan's ruling president Nursultan Nazarbayev, efforts to discredit former member of Russia's parliament Ashot Egiazaryan who fled to the US, as well as major corporate disputes.
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In 2013, Rinat Akhmetshin recommended attorneys with BakerHostetler to Russian officials associated with Prevezon during ongoing prosecution of Prevezon by the United States.
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In 2011, Rinat Akhmetshin was hired by Andrey Vavilov to mount a media campaign in order to derail Egiazaryan's application for asylum in the United States.
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Rinat Akhmetshin pushed negative stories on Egiazaryan in the American and Russian press, and helped manipulate internet search results to further promote the negative stories.
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Also in 2011, Rinat Akhmetshin was employed by an alliance of businessmen led by Dagestani politician Suleyman Kerimov, a financier close to Putin who was in a commercial and political dispute with competitor Egiazaryan.
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In court papers Rinat Akhmetshin stated that he was paid only by one businessman in the Kerimov alliance, but coordinated with Kerimov's team.
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In court papers filed with the New York Supreme Court in November 2015, lawyers for IMR, a Kazakh mining company that alleged it had been hacked, accused Rinat Akhmetshin of hacking into two computer systems and stealing sensitive and confidential materials as part of an alleged black-ops smear campaign against IMR.
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Rinat Akhmetshin, who was hired as an expert by a US law firm, denied hacking or asking anyone else to hack into IMR.
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Rinat Akhmetshin said he gathered research for the firm by bartering information with journalists before he was fired because of his ties to another client, the former prime minister of Kazakhstan, who was then an opposition figure in exile.
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Rinat Akhmetshin was linked to Fusion GPS in Washington, DC, and involved in a pro-Russian campaign in 2016 which involved lobbying congressional staffers to overturn the Magnitsky Act.
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On 14 July 2017, it was confirmed by multiple sources, including Rinat Akhmetshin himself, that he was a fifth and previously undisclosed attendee who met with Donald Trump Jr.
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Around the time of the meeting, Rinat Akhmetshin received half a million dollars in very large payments including $100,000 from Denis Katsyv and another $52,000 from a foundation financially supported by persons wishing to change the Magnitsky Act and Katsyv who donated $500,000 to the Natalia Veselnitskaya associated Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative.
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In 2018 Rinat Akhmetshin sued Bill Browder in a federal court in Washington, DC, accusing Browder of defamation for labeling him a spy or Russian intelligence asset.
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Rinat Akhmetshin appealed the dismissal; as of January 2020 the appeal is still pending.
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On 16 January 2020, Rinat Akhmetshin founded a nonprofit in Washington called the Russian-American Anti-Defamation League.