U.S. officials believe Russian oligarch and chef Yevgeny Prigozhi is the main financier behind the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Kremlin-linked troll factory that spread fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Prigozhi has close ties to Vladimir Putin:
Prigozhin has a colorful past. He spent nine years in prison in the 1980s for fraud and robbery, according to Russian media reports. After his release, he went into the catering business -- renovating a boat and opening New Island, one of a half-dozen upscale restaurants he owns in St. Petersburg. Putin turned to him to cater his birthday parties as well as dinners with visiting leaders, including President Bush and Jacques Chirac of France. A headline in The Moscow Times referred to Prigozhin as Putin's "Personal Chef."
Prigozhin subsequently won lucrative catering contracts for schools and Russia's armed forces. He escorted Putin around his new food-processing factory in 2010. By then he was very much a Kremlin insider with a growing commercial empire.
CNN says internal IRA documents show the troll factory had a "Department of Provocations' dedicated to sowing fake news and social divisions in the West."
The United States Treasury Department sanctioned Prigozhin personally in December 2016 for providing financial support for Russia's military occupation of Ukraine. Treasury added two of his companies to the list of sanctioned operations in June 2017.
Read more: Exclusive: Putin's 'chef,' the man behind the troll factory (CNN)