Umar Kremlev, the Russian oligarch at the centre of reports that he helped pay for Donald Trump Jr’s wedding in the Bahamas, has spent the past decade moving through some of Russia’s most politically connected circles.

Born in 1982 in Serpukhov, an industrial town about 60 miles south of Moscow, he has said he boxed until the age of 19 but never turned professional, blaming what he later called a lack of discipline.

In the years that followed, he accumulated a criminal record - convictions for extortion in 2004 and assault in 2007 – before resurfacing by the mid-2010s as a little-known boxing promoter. His outfit, Patriot, counted the former American world champion Roy Jones Jr among its roster. Jones was later granted Russian citizenship.

By then, Kremlev had also shed his birth name, swapping Lutfulloyev for the more Russian-sounding Kremlev – a surname that bears an obvious resemblance to the Kremlin, and one that also put further distance between him and his earlier crimes.

It was in these same years that he began building ties to figures close to Putin.

Kremlev started attending gatherings of the Night Wolves, an ultranationalist biker club whose leaders have long enjoyed close links to the Kremlin, the Russian investigative outlet Proekt wrote in a profile of the businessman.

At one of the bikers’ meetings, he met Alexei Rubezhny, a powerful major general in Russia’s federal protective service, which guards top officials.

Rubezhny became one of Kremlev’s most important patrons, helping him gain access to senior officials and lobby his interests through the government. The two are also related: Proekt reported that Kremlev is married to Rubezhny’s sister.

Kremlev’s rise through boxing came soon afterwards. In 2017, he was made secretary general of the Russian Boxing Federation, which under his tenure grew closely tied to powerful members of the Russian elite.

Rubezhny headed its supervisory board, while Igor Sechin, the chief executive of the state oil company Rosneft and one of Putin’s longest-serving allies, has also served on it.

Kremlev’s reach soon went global. In 2020 he was elected president of AIBA, later renamed the International Boxing Association, putting a Russian official with strong Kremlin ties at the head of the sport’s international governing body.

His tenure proved deeply controversial. In 2023, the International Olympic Committee withdrew recognition from the IBA after years of concerns over its governance, finances and refereeing, an unprecedented move against an international sports federation.

Kremlev responded by stepping up attacks on Olympic officials. He described former boxing administrator CK Wu as a criminal who “should be shot” and accused senior IOC figures, including its then president Thomas Bach, of trying to destroy boxing.

He has continued to organise IBA tournaments in countries whose national federations remain loyal to the organisation, while promising financial support and the construction of boxing centres. Under Kremlev, the IBA reinstated Russian and Belarusian boxers under their national flags and anthems, while Kremlev repeatedly criticised bans on Russian athletes.

At the same time, Kremlev’s business interests in Russia expanded rapidly.

He is believed to effectively control three of the country’s largest betting companies and was one of the main beneficiaries of a state-led overhaul of the gambling market, according to two people familiar with his assets.

In 2024, Kremlev acquired Rolf, Russia’s largest car dealership group, after it was nationalised and seized from its founder, Sergei Petrov, a Kremlin critic who had left the country.

In a sign of his growing influence, Kremlev joined the business delegation that travelled to China with Putin, shortly before flying on to the Bahamas.

Like others in Moscow’s upper echelons, Kremlev has shown open loyalty to Putin throughout his rise.

“Thanks to one person, today there are really all kinds of opportunities to earn money and to strive for more,” he said in a video interview in 2024.

“That person, of course, is our president, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”