A fresh look at Erik Prince’s House Intelligence Committee testimony and emails with Christophe Charlier, Chairman of Russian company Renaissance Capital

Committee members asked Prince about Glencore, the UAE’s Mubadala fund, his former employee Joe Schmitz and his relationship to Charlier and Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov.

This past week Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, released a letter he had sent to Rep. Devin Nunes requesting that the committee provide Special Counsel Mueller transcripts of all interviews conducted during the Trump-Russia investigation. Schiff raised concerns that:

“certain witnesses may have testified untruthfully before our committee, and believe that Mr. Mueller should consider whether perjury charges are warranted.”

While the transcript of Erik Prince’s November 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee was publicly released (excluding one part that was ‘off the record’), new reporting has called into question the veracity of Prince’s testimony. It seems likely that Prince is one of the witnesses Schiff referred to in his letter.

Recent news stories have added additional context to some sections of Prince’s testimony, and there are a few key parts of the transcript that have not been widely reported on that raise questions worth further investigation.

Erik Prince’s Emails with Christophe Charlier

There has been surprisingly little reporting on multiple references in Prince’s testimony to 23 pages of material Prince provided to the committee that included emails exchanged with Christophe Charlier. Prince had previously provided the documents to the Senate in response to a request for communications he had with any Russian national from approximately 2016 to 2017. Although Prince was not sure if Charlier was a Russian national, he described the emails this way:





And Mr. Charlier runs an investment bank with an office in Russia.

And he lives between the U.K. and Switzerland, I recall. And that

investment bank focuses on natural resources, fundraising, capital,

debt equity, mergers and acquisitions kind of stuff. ( MR. PRINCE: Yeah. The first email, as I recall, dates from November, end of November 2016. And he is emailing me, congratulating me on the appointment of my sister to be Secretary of Education. And then the rest of the communications were in 2017.And Mr. Charlier runs an investment bank with an office in Russia.And he lives between the U.K. and Switzerland, I recall. And thatinvestment bank focuses on natural resources, fundraising, capital,debt equity, mergers and acquisitions kind of stuff. ( p.33

Christophe Charlier is Chairman of Renaissance Capital, an “emerging and frontier markets investment bank” founded in 1995 by a group that included New Zealander Stephen Jennings, who departed in 2013 after the firm was sold to Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Group. Renaissance Capital’s website describes operations in Sub-Saharan Africa, Russia, the Middle East and Asia, all regions — with the exception of Russia —similar to those where Erik Prince is known to do business. Prince said he first met Charlier around 2012–2013 when he was looking for help raising equity for a project in Africa.

Rep. Jackie Speier asked Prince about Charlier’s boss, Mikhail Prokhorov and his involvement with Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum company Rusal, where Prokhorov had served as a board member and his company Onexim had owned 14% of Rusal. Prince denied knowledge of Rusal and said about Prokhorov: “I might have met him in passing, but I had no business dealings with him at all.”

Rep. Speier then asked Prince about Renaissance Capital:



employed a string of former KGB spies and received millions of British pounds as part of a giant fraud being investigated by Sergei Magnitsky, the individual found dead in a Russian prison. Were you aware of that?



MR. PRINCE: No. Christophe is the only guy I ever met from the firm. ( MS. SPEIER: So press reports indicate that this firm hasemployed a string of former KGB spies and received millions of British pounds as part of a giant fraud being investigated by Sergei Magnitsky, the individual found dead in a Russian prison. Were you aware of that?MR. PRINCE: No. Christophe is the only guy I ever met from the firm. ( p.73

An August 2017 Telegraph article described Renaissance Capital as a firm that “has employed a string of former KGB spies” and:

“£6 million from funds at the centre of a giant fraud which was being investigated by Sergei Magnitsky has allegedly been traced to a UK bank account held by Renaissance Capital.”

The U.S. Department of Justice had traced proceeds of the fraud to a bank account in Bournemouth held by Renaissance Capital Investment Management Ltd. However, the article notes that prosecutors “have not alleged that Renaissance was aware of or complicit in the original crime.”

The Telegraph lists several senior Renaissance Capital employees with prior experience in the KGB and FSB:

Yuri Sagaidak, a KGB spy expelled from Britain in 1989, was the firm’s deputy general director until at least 2005.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, former acting head of financial intelligence at its successor the FSB, was appointed vice president in 2006.

Yuri Kobaladze, a former KGB general, was Renaissance’s managing director from 1999 until early 2007.

Although these examples are a decade old, there is a very recent significant story involving a senior employee of Renaissance Capital who also worked as an FSB officer.

In March 2017 the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment of Igor Sushchin and three other people for the 2014 Yahoo hack which impacted 500 million user accounts — a theft that appeared to be the world’s largest known cyber breach. Igor Suschin, described in the indictment as an FSB officer, had been working at Prokhorov’s Renaissance Capital, managed by Charlier, at a division called Renaissance Broker, and was fired the day after the indictment was announced. Suschin’s job was “head of information security at the Russian financial firm, where he monitored the communications of Russian financial firm employees.”

Rep. Speier moved on to questions about an email from Charlier discussing the Swiss commodity and mining company Glencore, which highlights how Prince and Charlier discussed important strategic plans related to Prince’s business:

MS. SPEIER: Okay. Who is Cyrus Behbehani from Glencore, and

what is your relationship with him?



MR. PRINCE: He works for Glencore, and someone I have talked to

before about commodities. MS. SPEIER: So in this email on June 28, Charlier asked you, do

you ever interact with Glencore? I know someone, whose name is blotted out, quite well as we sat on the RUSAL board together. He could be interested, acquirer from -- for your African businesses. At the right time for you, I would like my team to take a look at these businesses and see if we can come up with interesting ideas.

that's referencing Cyrus Behbehani. So -- ( And you wrote back, "I don't know Ivan, but do you know," andthat's referencing Cyrus Behbehani. So -- ( p.74

When Mikhail Prokhorov left the board of Oleg Deripaska’s company Rusal, Charlier took his place as a director alongside Ivan Glasenberg, the CEO of Glencore. It appears that Ivan Glasenberg is the person Charlier suggests could be interested in acquiring Erik Prince’s African businesses. And Charlier indicates that he would like his team to look at Prince’s businesses, indicating a potential future business interaction.

Erik Prince wrote to Charlier that he did not know Ivan, but he did know Cyrus Behbehani at Glencore. Behbehani had previously headed up Morgan Stanley’s Middle East operations and was hired by Glencore in March 2017.

Rep. Speier then asked Prince if he was familiar with the Russian oil company Rosneft selling a portion of the company to Glencore. Prince replied “I have no knowledge of that or dealings in that.”

The sale of 19% of Rosneft to Glencore and Qatar in December 2016 had been covered extensively in the news, largely because the transaction was mentioned in the Christopher Steele dossier, which described the brokerage from the sale as a quid pro quo payment to Trump’s associates in exchange for lifting sanctions against Russia. Speier asked Prince again about any knowledge of the Rosneft deal and Prince doubled down on his denial:



privatization sale to Glencore or other companies in December?



MR. PRINCE: Zero. Zero. ( MS. SPEIER: Okay. So you don't know anything about Rosneft'sprivatization sale to Glencore or other companies in December?MR. PRINCE: Zero. Zero. ( p.75

The UAE’s Mubadala sovereign wealth fund

Rep. Mike Quigley asked Prince questions about emails with Charlier discussing Mubadala, the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, and whether Mubadala was involved in Prince’s meeting in the Seychelles:

MR. QUIGLEY: In one of the emails you provided to us today,

Charlier asked you whether you developed relations with Mubadala. But there is no response from you. Are you familiar with Mubadala? MR. PRINCE: Yeah. It's actually called Mubadala. It's a

business entity in the UAE that does everything from computer chips

to aluminum production to agriculture, agribusiness. So, yeah, I have met with people from Mubadala before, sure. MR. QUIGLEY: Are you still in contact with them? MR. PRINCE: Not lately, no. MR. QUIGLEY: When did the first contact occur? MR. PRINCE: Probably 2010. MR. QUIGLEY: Was this firm represented at the Seychelles meeting? MR. PRINCE: I don't know. MR. QUIGLEY: Was a deal with this firm discussed at the Seychelles meeting?

an interest in bauxite. So that would probably be the only tangential overlap they have. ( MR. PRINCE: Well, no. But I would say bauxite was, and they havean interest in bauxite. So that would probably be the only tangential overlap they have. ( pp.80-81

When asked if Mubadala was represented at the January 2017 Seychelles meeting, Prince’s “I don’t know” is more vague than many of his other responses. And he confirms that Mubadala had an interest in bauxite, which was as a topic of discussion with Mohammed bin Zayed in the Seychelles. In 2013 Mubadala had launched a multi-billion dollar co-investment fund with the Russian Direct Investment Fund led by CEO Kirill Dmitriev, who Prince also met with in the Seychelles. It would not be surprising if it turns out that Mubadala was represented at the Seychelles meeting.