Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns the former President's social media site, Truth Social, was able to go public last week, made possible by emergency loans provided in 2022 by a Russian-American businessman under investigation, according to a report, in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering probe.
Feeling the pressure, Trump Media took out the emergency loans from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is widely recognized, according to The Guardian, for offering financial services to the porn industry.
Trump Media was forced to turn to other means after traditional banks refused to lend millions to the social media company amidst the January 6 Capitol attack.
It was a close call for Trump Media after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger, causing the company to go through cash at an astounding rate while it waited for the official go-ahead for its stock market debut.
The Guardian reported that ES Family Trust functioned like a shell company for Russian-American businessman Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been the focus of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.
The problem lies within the loans provided to Trump Media by ES Family Trust that they may have been used to authorize transactions Paxum could not.
Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US, as it does not hold a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC.
Postolnikov seemingly used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media along with the Truth Social platform, as his bank could not provide the funds.
Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime.
It also remains unclear as to whether the former president or Trump Media had any knowledge behind the dealings.
The former US president stands to make billions of dollars as his stake's valued at roughly $4 billion thanks to the 2021 merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which took the parent company of Truth Social public.
