Erik Prince, the businessman who is said to have represented the Trump campaign during a meeting with a Russian representative in the Seychelles islands in January, is scheduled to testify before the House intelligence committee this week.

The founder of Blackwater – a private military firm later known as Xe Services and now known as Academi – Prince is set to appear Thursday before the committee behind closed doors. The appearance was described by the committee as "open in a closed space," indicating that a transcript will likely be released after the interview.

The Seychelles meeting, which was revealed by The Washington Post in April, was apparently brokered by the United Arab Emirates in an attempt to revamp Russia's relationship with Iran, possibly in exchange for concessions from the U.S. on sanctions against Moscow. Though Price had no official role in the Trump campaign or on the transition team, he was seen at the Trump transition offices in December, is a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump and large donor to his campaign. His sister, Betsy DeVos, currently serves as Trump's secretary of education, and campaign insiders told the Washington Post that Prince's "name surfaced so frequently in internal discussions that he seemed to function as an outside adviser whose opinions were valued on a range of issues, including plans for overhauling the U.S. intelligence community."

The Seychelles meetings unfolded over two days and took place after two other meetings that different top Trump confidants – national security adviser Michael Flynn, son-in-law Jared Kushner and chief strategist Stephen Bannon – had in New York City with Russia's ambassador to the U.S. and the UAE's crown prince. None of the meetings were publicly disclosed until they emerged in news reports this year.

Prince has acknowledged that he traveled to the Seychelles and, while there, had a conversation with a Russian representative. But he has contended that the discussion was only in passing, and that it did not touch on any matters related to the Trump presidency or U.S. sanctions of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

"We talked about the Russian business climate, where we thought oil was headed price-wise and how much he thought Russia would like to do business in America," Prince told the New York Observer, the newspaper formerly owned by Kushner and now published by Kushner's brother-in-law. "It had nothing to do with national security, the Trump campaign, or anything else."

Prince, a former Navy SEAL, was the founder of Blackwater, a private security firm that grew to become one of the State Department's largest security providers. He stepped down as CEO in 2009, after Blackwater became enmeshed in scandal and intense scrutiny after its contractors opened fire in a crowded intersection in Iraq in 2007, killing 17 people and wounding 20 others. Three guards involved in the shooting were later convicted of manslaughter charges, and a fourth was convicted of murder.