Jared Kushner, the senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump. Thomson Reuters Federal and congressional investigators are examining why Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, met with Sergey N. Gorkov, a Russian banker who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to The New York Times.

Reuters reported last week, citing a current US law enforcement official, that the FBI is examining whether Gorkov suggested to Kushner that Russian banks could finance Trump associates' business ventures if US sanctions were lifted or relaxed.

Gorkov, who was appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2016 as part of a restructuring of the bank's management team, would have had good reason to push for the US to lift sanctions. Vnesheconombank had huge success between 2007 and 2014, but came crashing down when oil prices tanked and President Barack Obama levied sanctions on Kremlin officials and entities over Russia's annexation of Crimea.

By February 2016, the bank — whose stated official mission is to "take efforts to make the Russian economy more competitive, diversify it, and foster investment" — was struggling to find enough cash to stay afloat. Its bailout needs had increased to $16 billion between 2016 and 2020, Reuters reported.

Kushner's meeting with Gorkov came on the heels of his meeting with Russia's ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, at Trump Tower, in which he reportedly floated the possibility of setting up a secure line of communication between the Trump transition team and Russia.

Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the US to communicate, which would essentially conceal the Trump team's interactions with Russian officials from US government scrutiny, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said in a press conference Saturday that the US had backchannels with several countries, suggesting that the matter shouldn't be cause for concern. But he would not address the specific claim that Kushner had wanted to use Russian, rather than American, facilities to establish the channel.

Former US intelligence officials told Business Insider last week that if Kushner did try to establish a backchannel to Russia without going through the conventional US intelligence paths, it would be "off the map," "explosive," and "extremely dangerous."

The timing of Kushner's meetings with Gorkov and Kislyak has raised questions given allegations by US intelligence agencies that Russia had worked to meddle in November's election to help Trump.

Trump campaigned on openness toward improving relations with Putin, specifically in the areas of counterterrorism and ending the Syrian civil war. Sources close to the administration defended the meetings to The Times, citing those causes.

But the reports that the meeting between Kushner and Gorkov is being investigated may suggest that the investigators remain skeptical, or unsatisfied, with the answers the Trump administration has provided. The FBI and separate congressional committees are conducting investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates were involved.

The Kremlin and the White House have provided conflicting explanations for why Kushner met privately with Gorkov in the first place.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has told reporters that Kushner's meeting with Vnesheconombank CEO Sergey Gorkov in late December "was ordinary business," echoing the bank's previous claim that it had met with Kushner in his capacity as "the head of Kushner companies."

"As part of the preparation of the new strategy, executives of Vnesheconombank met with representatives of leading financial institutes in Europe, Asia, and America multiple times during 2016," the bank told Reuters in March.

"During the talks, the existing practices of foreign development banks and promising trends were discussed," it added. It also said the meetings took place "with a number of representatives of the largest banks and business establishments of the United States, including Jared Kushner, the head of Kushner Companies."

That appears to conflict with the White House's version of events — that Kushner met with Gorkov as a representative of Trump's transition team.

"Jared attended the meeting in his capacity as a transition official," a senior White House official told Business Insider in late March. "Nothing of substance was discussed. There was no follow-up."