Rinat Akhmetshin

Rinat Rafkatovitch Akhmetshin (Ринат Рафкатович Ахметшин, born 1967) is a Russian-American lobbyist and a former Soviet counterintelligence officer.

Bill Browder alleges that Akhmetshin represents Russian intelligence interests.

Akhmetshin was born in Jan 22, 1968 Kazan, Tatarstan.

Akhmetshin served briefly as a counterintelligence officer for the Soviet Union and, according to some U.S. officials, is suspected of "having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence".

According to his statements, from 1986 to 1988 Rinat Akhmetshin served as a draftee in a unit of the Soviet military that had responsibility for law enforcement issues as well as some counterintelligence matters and was briefly in Afghanistan.

At a Soviet Army checkpoint in a tunnel in northern Afghanistan, he obtained cash and numerous items from Afghans which he would sell later while he was with a counterintelligence unit.

As a teenager in the Soviet armed forces, he was a courier that carried secret documents in briefcases handcuffed to his wrist with two men carrying Kalashnikovs and that he has been to every Soviet military base in Estonia and Latvia.

During his time in the Baltics, he sold gasoline from Soviet Army sources.

In 1992, he became a first lieutenant in "chemical defence" and trained in the Urals however he claims that he never received training to be an officer.

Before 1992, he studied chemistry for one year at Kazan State University.

He stated, "I will never f**k with Russian state," and "I will never do things against Russian government."

He moved to the United States in 1994 to study biochemistry.

As he became a lobbyist for issues relating to the Former Soviet Union, his mentor was Edward Lieberman.

In 1998, he set up the Washington D.C. office of the International Eurasian Institute for Economic and Political Research to "help expand democracy and the rule of law in Eurasia".

He has been tied to lobbying for political opposition to Kazakhstan's ruling president Nursultan Nazarbayev, efforts to discredit former member of Russia's parliament Ashot Egiazaryan who fled to the U.S., as well as major corporate disputes.

While Akhmetshin headed the International Eurasian Institute, Andrey Vavilov hired Akhmetshin to thwart the efforts of Ashot Egiazaryan who was trying to obtain political asylum in the United States.

Previously, John Moscow of BakerHostetler represented Hermitage Capital interests for nine months beginning in September 2008 while Rengaz associated 2006 theft of tax rebates in Russia by a Russian criminal organization.

Natalia Veselnitskaya represented Denis Katsyv's interests during the court cases related to Prevezon and also assisted the Glenn Simpson associated Fusion GPS during its research into Bill Browder.

According to the New York Times, Akhmetshin was accused of being involved in two hacking campaigns and reportedly had a web of Russian connections.

In 2009, he obtained citizenship of the United States.

In 2010, he submitted an op-ed to The Washington Times on behalf of Viktor Ivanov the director of Russia's anti-narcotic police.

Egiazaryan, a former State Duma member had fled Russia in 2010.

According to his own testimony, Akhmetshin was paid "$70,000 or $80,000" in $100 bills.

Akhmetshin pushed negative stories on Egiazaryan in the American and Russian press, and also helped manipulate internet search results to further promote the negative stories.

In 2011, Akhmetshin was hired by Andrey Vavilov to mount a media campaign in order to derail Egiazaryan's application for asylum in the United States.

Also in 2011, Akhmetshin was employed by an alliance of businessmen led by Dagestani politician Suleyman Kerimov, a financier close to Putin who was in a commercial and political dispute with competitor Egiazaryan.

In early 2011 two of Egiazaryan's lawyers based in London received suspicious emails.

The forensics experts they hired for analysis found that the emails contained spyware, and when they fed traceable documents into the spyware the documents were opened by computers registered at the Moscow office park of a company owned by Kerimov.

From 2012 to 2014, EuroChem's United States attorneys retained Akhmetshin as a consultant while the Andrey Melnichenko controlled EuroChem filed lawsuits in Europe against International Mineral Resources (IMR) that was controlled by the Kazakh Trio of Patokh Chodiev, Alexander Machkevitch, and Alijan Ibragimov who had founded the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation.

Mark Cymrot of the United States law firm Baker and Hostetler LLC (BakerHostetler) hired Fusion GPS.

Previously, Cymrot had represented Rakhat Aliyev.

In 2013, Akhmetshin recommended attorneys with BakerHostetler to Russian officials associated with Prevezon during ongoing prosecution of Prevezon by the United States.

In 2013, both John Moscow and Mark Cymrot of BakerHostetler hired Glenn Simpson and Akhmetshin for support during the Bill Browder, Hermitage Capital and Sergey Magnitsky related case involving Prevezon and Preet Bharara.

Scotland Yard spent more than 18 months investigating the case but in 2013 concluded that they lacked sufficient evidence to bring charges.

In court papers Akhmetshin stated that he was paid only by one businessman in the Kerimov alliance, but coordinated with Kerimov's team.

In a lawsuit filed in July 2015 with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, it was alleged by International Mineral Resources (IMR) that Akhmetshin had arranged the hacking of a mining company's private records.

In court papers filed with the New York Supreme Court in November 2015, lawyers for IMR, a Kazakh mining company that alleged it had been hacked, accused Akhmetshin of hacking into two computer systems and stealing sensitive and confidential materials as part of an alleged black-ops smear campaign against IMR.

Akhmetshin, who was hired as an expert by a US law firm, denied hacking or asking anyone else to hack into IMR.

In 2016 Akhmetshin told Politico: "Just because I was born in Russia doesn't mean I am an agent of [the] Kremlin."

He came to American media spotlight in July 2017 as a registered lobbyist for an organization run by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who, along with him, had a meeting with Donald Trump's election campaign officials in June 2016.