Truth Social parent company bailed out by Russian-American facing criminal probe: report

In the year before it went public last week, the Trump Media company was reportedly kept afloat financially thanks to emergency loans from a firm owned by a Russian-American businessman currently under investigation for money laundering.

The Guardian reports that Truth Social received desperately needed cash infusions from an entity called ES Family Trust, which was established in 2021 and that essentially operated as a shell company for Anton Postolnikov, whom the report notes has been under "years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger."

The publication documents how the trust that made loans to Trump Media opened an account at Paxum Bank, a small Caribbean bank which is co-owned by Postolnikov.

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"The new details about the trust are drawn from documents including: Paxum Bank records showing Postolnikov having access to the trust’s account, the papers that created the trust showing as its settlor a lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, and three years of the trust’s financial transactions," writes The Guardian. "The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not."

The report further notes that Postolnikov is the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, who is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Read the full report at this link.