Was Russian Developer a Kremlin Conduit to Trump?

Russian Island, near the port city of Vladivostok in the far east, was a decaying former military base and home to a scattering of cattle when President Vladimir V. Putin suddenly envisioned it as a $1.2 billion campus where he could welcome heads of state for an Asia-Pacific conference.

A little more than three years later, in 2012, Mr. Putin opened the spectacular Far Eastern Federal University, some 70 modern buildings built in a crescent overlooking the sparkling Pacific Ocean.

Not long after, Mr. Putin pinned a blue-ribboned state medal, the Order of Honor, on Mr. Aras Agalarov’s (of the Crocus Group) chest at a dazzling Kremlin ceremony. Soon, a string of demanding, more prominent projects followed: a stretch of superhighway ringing Moscow; two troubled stadiums for the 2018 World Cup, including one in a Baltic swamp.

Mr. Agalarov, 61, also worked on a project with a future president, Donald J. Trump. Last week, the Russian developer and his crooner son and heir, Emin, were thrust into the swirl of speculation about whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election.

The American attorney for the Agalarovs, Scott S. Balber, contradicted Mr. Goldstone’s version, asserting in an interview that the senior Mr. Agalarov’s role was merely a matter of an introduction. “People in the business world do favors for each other all the time. As a courtesy to a lawyer they had a relationship with, they made an introduction,” Mr. Balber said. “We were not in possession of damaging info. We had no reason to believe this was in relation to the Russian government.”

While there is no indication beyond what was said in the emails that the Agalarovs were serving as a conduit between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, wealthy and well-connected businessmen are often called on to do the bidding of the Russian government.

When it comes to exploiting those opportunities, the Kremlin often ignores its own bureaucrats, diplomats and other agents in favor of someone it thinks will get the job done — a charmed group whose members rise and fall in status along with their usefulness to Mr. Putin and his top aides.

In that context, analysts find it entirely plausible that the Kremlin would tap Mr. Agalarov, a construction tycoon with a web of contacts to Mr. Trump, as a way to pass information to the Trump presidential campaign.

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