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Cooper emailed the CIA and called the FBI hotline to offer the audio on her behalf, but says he’s never heard back from either agency.

“American authorities are not reacting, they don’t want to give them asylum, because it’s the Trump administration and they have evidence against Trump,” he charged in an interview Wednesday.

If the U.S. is not interested in helping them, Cooper says Canada, or some other Western country, should offer the couple a safe harbour.

Meanwhile, he says new — but false — accusations have just been levelled against Lesley in Thailand, and others in the group have gone into hiding.

“They’re all talking to me, and I’m slowly becoming the official face of all this organization, because everybody else is in countries where they can be really, really, really under pressure,” said Cooper. “I can speak out, I’m in a safe place here.”

Photo by Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP

The 42-year-old was born in eastern Siberia but emigrated with his family to Israel when he was a teenager. It was there he met Gregory Cohen, one of the “masterminds” of what would become a loosely knit group advocating sexual freedom and self-awareness.

Cohen, who left Israel for Thailand, later introduced Cooper to Lesley and Ribka — Belarussians whose real names are Alexander Kirillov and Anastasia Vashukevich — “because they were interesting people and they have interesting ideas.”

Both made a name in Russia as dating and sex gurus; an English translation of one of Lesley’s books — Life without Panties — boasts it will “teach you how to get acquainted with girls but also how to flirt and seduce them.”

Ribka — also referred to as an escort in some media reports — eventually began an affair with Deripaska, an aluminum tycoon who reportedly has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also did business with Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager for part of 2016.

Nastya is in the most dangerous situation

On board the mega-yacht Queen K, Ribka recorded what ended up as 80 gigabytes of conversation, says Cooper. The Calgarian says multiple copies of the recordings are in the hands of various friends, though he said he does not have one himself.

A lot of the conversation is inconsequential, including Deripaska musing about investing in cloning technology so he could make copies of himself, according to Cooper.

“Very, very rich Russian people, mostly drunk.” he says with a chuckle.

But he alleges there was also much discussion of the U.S. election, and “many, many” English-speaking guests.

Things started getting dodgy for the Ribka and her friend after Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, posted a video taken by her on the yacht, showing Deripaska talking American politics with a deputy prime minister. Navalny called it evidence of corruption.