WASHINGTON—A Russian businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin financed celebrations in the Bahamas that immediately followed Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding to Bettina Anderson earlier this year.
In a statement posted on Instagram, the couple confirmed that Umar Kremlev paid for two nights of post-wedding events that took place on secluded Bahamian islands.
“It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful,” they wrote in the statement, which was accompanied by photographs showing President Trump’s adult children and their friends celebrating after the wedding.
In the statement, the couple said they got married in a small ceremony with only their family present, then celebrated with a larger group. The couple said the weekend trip, which was financed by Kremlev, was previously planned and wasn’t initially intended to be a wedding celebration.
ProPublica earlier reported that Kremlev financed the wedding celebration. Kremlev didn’t respond to a request for comment. President Trump didn’t attend his son’s wedding celebrations, which were held over Memorial Day weekend.
“I have no idea who Umar is, never heard of him,” Trump said in a statement, in which he drew a distinction between the ceremony and the post-wedding events. “It was an ‘afterparty’ given in their honor. Not a big deal!”
First lady Melania Trump, who didn’t attend the wedding or the subsequent party, distanced herself from the events. “Mrs. Trump does not, and has never had, a relationship with Mr. Kremlev,” according to a spokesman to the first lady. “Mrs. Trump played no role whatsoever in organizing the wedding event and was not privy to any aspect of its financial planning.”
In photos of the Bahamas celebration viewed by The Wall Street Journal, guests posed under a heart, and one guest captioned her post “the wedding of the century.”
Photos showed dancing under disco balls, a white cake topped with figurines of a bride and groom and Donald Trump Jr. holding his new wife in his arms as fireworks erupt in the background. One photo shows a DJ stand painted white with black text showing “B & D”—for Bettina and Donald.
In an interview with the Journal, one wedding guest recalled seeing a group of people who were speaking Russian—but the guest didn’t know who they were.
Guests at the Bahamas afterparty included Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner , a top adviser to the president who recently met with Putin in Moscow. A spokeswoman for Kushner didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Kremlev has been working to expand the influence of his International Boxing Association, which he has headed since 2020, and he has had a handful of meetings with Donald Trump Jr. since President Trump came to office. Kremlev started boxing in his home city Serpukhov south of Moscow.
Last year, Kremlev sat next to Donald Trump Jr. at a conference panel in Istanbul, alongside Rasheda Ali Walsh, Muhammad Ali’s daughter. “President Kremlev and Donald Trump Jr made it clear—this alliance will not remain symbolic,” the IBA said in a statement after the conference.
On May 24, amid the Bahamian celebrations he funded, Kremlev posted a picture of himself walking through the woods wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Vladimir Putin that said, “Who Took Berlin by Storm?”
Earlier this summer, Kremlev’s IBA hosted its first bare-knuckle tournament inside the U.S. with a 10-bout card of boxing, mixed martial arts, kickboxing and bare-knuckle matches. The event was set to be hosted by Andrew Tate, who was then back in the U.S.
“See you all tomorrow night,” Tate said at a promotional event the day before the tournament, according to a video on an IBA Instagram account. Tate was arrested outside the venue after the U.K. sought his extradition on dozens of charges, including rape and sex trafficking.
Kremlev has been sanctioned by Ukraine for his links to Putin. Ukraine accuses him of acting as a conduit of Russian influence.
The Russian native has made a name for himself inside the world of boxing since he took over the IBA, rebranding it and often putting himself at the center of its events. He courted controversy shortly after taking over the association by changing its name, its logo and starting a partnership with Gazprom that turned the state-owned gas giant into the body’s biggest sponsor.
Shortly after Trump’s 2025 inauguration, Kremlev published an open letter to the new U.S. president congratulating him on his election win and expressing hope that he would “look into” the International Olympic Committee’s decision to not include boxing in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. He has also repeatedly spoken out against a ban of Russian athletes from competing under their country’s flag.
Kremlev has long acted in the interests of the Kremlin and a small group of politicians, businessmen and security agents with whom he is associated.
Kremlev’s first brush with Kremlin politics came after he joined the Night Wolves , the country’s most prominent motorcycle club, which sought to boost nationalism and public support of Putin following the first round of Western sanctions slapped on Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
He wore a leather vest with a Russian tricolor, participated in the groups’ publicity stunts and met another boxing aficionado, Alexei Rubezhnoy. The two of them left the Night Wolves around the same time, and they got involved in the Russian Boxing Federation, which had grown more political under Putin.
The two remain friends and still pose together in boxing gear online.
Eventually Rubezhnoy, a barrel-chested fighter, would take over as the head of Putin’s Federal Guards’ Service, Moscow’s equivalent of the Secret Service, a coveted position with proximity to the country’s most powerful man.
Kremlev would likewise see his star rise, going from the president of the Russian Boxing Federation to the head of the international amateur boxing association in 2020. That same year, Putin invited him to the Kremlin to award him the Medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland” for his contributions to sport.
Since then, the IBA has expanded its ties to Russia, with Russians in its leadership and many matches taking place there. The body suspended in 2022 the membership of the Ukrainian Boxing Federation, which ultimately withdrew entirely from the IBA.
Kremlev is also associated with the organization Healthy Fatherland, which has been sanctioned by Ukraine for its role in mass abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied territories to Russia.
Write to Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com and Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com
