By Jacob Bogage and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, Sept 18 (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump said on Friday his son, Donald Trump Jr., has told him he would pay back a Russian oligarch who bankrolled wedding celebrations for him in the Bahamas in May.
Democrats in the US Congress launched an investigation this week into reports that Umar Kremlev, a wealthy Russian businessman and president of the International Boxing Association, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the wedding festivities.
ProPublica, which first reported Kremlev’s involvement, said he has close ties to the Russian government.
Trump told reporters on Friday that when he asked his son about the report, he responded, “‘No, I’m paying it back, Dad.’ And that was a while ago. So I heard he’s paying.”
A person familiar with the situation confirmed that Don Jr. planned to reimburse Kremlev.
Kremlev and the IBA did not immediately respond to requests for comment late on Friday.
The president, who did not attend his son’s wedding, said in a statement earlier in the week that he does not know Kremlev and that the wedding controversy is “not a big deal!”
Trump said on Friday he has given wedding parties to “numerous people” at “beautiful places” like his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida.
“They get married, I give them a party,” Trump said. “With all of that being said, I understand that Don’s paid him back.”
Don Jr.’s wife, Bettina Trump, in an Instagram post on Monday called Kremlev a friend who extended an “extraordinarily generous wedding gift,” stressing that Kremlev paid for two after-parties, not the wedding itself.
(Reporting by Jacob Bogage and Steve Holland; additional reporting by Alexander Ulmer; Editing by David Ljunggren, Colleen Jenkins and Will Dunham)
