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New evidence suggests Jeffrey Epstein channelled millions of dollars through Russian-linked banks – as Byline Times reveals fresh details of the Kremlin-connected tech figures at the heart of his circle.
Three women close to Epstein – Masha Bucher, her sister Victoria Drokova, and model-turned-entrepreneur Lana Pozhidaeva – built venture-capital empires in Silicon Valley while maintaining hidden financial ties to Russian oligarchs, documents obtained by Byline Times show.
Together the three of them have continued to grow their interests in Silicon Valley, even as many of their former business associates have come under increasing scrutiny since the Kremlin’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Wyden has intensified his push, introducing legislation to compel Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to release Epstein-related banking records. In a July letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, he wrote that Epstein moved ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ through Russian banks now under US sanctions. Wyden in particular has continued to press for answers regarding Epstein’s business life, particularly his transactions with Russian banks.
Epstein’s PR agent
Before she rebranded herself as a Silicon Valley investor, Masha Bucher had grown up in Russia and became a teenage star of Nashi, President Vladimir Putin’s nationalist youth organisation. She was featured in the 2012 documentary Putin’s Kiss. Yet within a decade, she was running an American PR firm whose client list included Jeffrey Epstein.
In 2011 she joined Runa Capital, a deep tech venture capital firm started by Serguei Beloussov, a Russian businessman who has since shortened his name to Serg Bell. She also worked at Bell’s cybersecurity firm Acronis. Bell was one of several Russian-linked tech leaders under scrutiny by US authorities investigating whether the tech firms were part of a Kremlin effort to obtain cutting-edge technologies.
While Bell has distanced himself from Russian money after the country’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he previously had the financial support of at least one Russian businessman who has run into trouble in the US.
According to the Pandora Papers – a 2021 leak of offshore finance documents reviewed by Byline Times – Bell’s fund Phystech Ventures received a $2 million commitment from Intellect Capital (Cyprus) Ltd., owned by Russian oligarch Andrey Muraviev, later indicted in the US for illegal political donations from Rudy Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. An indictment against Muraviev was unsealed in 2022, although he is still believed to be in Russia.
In 2014, Bucher launched M&A PR Studio – later MA Family – whose clients included Jeffrey Epstein, though the nature of its work for the disgraced financier remains unclear. Bucher did not respond to questions about her agency’s PR work on behalf of the billionaire who had previously pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from underage girls, or to questions about her travels to Russia.
At the same tim,e she also became an angel investor. It has now rebranded as MA Family and its clients include Bell’s company Runa Capital, Cointelegraph and the Czech software company JetBrains.
Bucher’s first notable angel bet was NTech Lab, the Russian facial-recognition developer behind the FindFace app and other state surveillance projects. Corporate records show she held 200 shares at end-2016 before exiting the following year.
She then launched Day One Ventures, rebranding herself as a Silicon Valley fund manager. In public, Bucher framed a clean break with Moscow: “It is toxic money since 2014, after Crimea,” she told the Washington Post in April 2022.
Documents obtained by Byline Times contradict that clean break. Leaked Russian border-crossing records show at least 22 trips to Russia between August 2014 and August 2021. On 24 August 2021 she was issued a new Russian driving licence after reporting the previous one stolen.
Her appearances also underscore proximity to the Russian state. On 6 June 2019, one day after flying from Switzerland to Russia, Bucher spoke at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum panel “The Power of Youth and the Next Generation of Global Business” alongside Runa Capital associate Konstantin Vinogradov.
Later that year, she met with Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov alongside Russian businessman Dmitry Eremeev, whom Bucher has said was the first investor in Day One Ventures. In 2023, the US sanctioned Minnikhanov for corruption and his position on the board of a company producing fighter aircraft for the Russian military.
While little is known about the money behind Day One Ventures, despite Bucher’s claim that Russian money was toxic since 2014, leaked documents from two Cypriot accounting firms show that at least one of the fund’s investors is Russian businessman Sergey Dashkov, who owns an investment fund called Joint Journey Ltd. One document from November 2021 shows that at the end of 2020, Joint Journey held just over one percent of the total fund based on total capital commitment.
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Money Manager for Oligarchs
Unlike her sister, Victoria Drokova kept a lower profile than her sister, while maintaining a close relationship with Epstein’s former associate Lana Pozhidaeva. Much of Victoria’s business career consists of work for entities closely connected to Russian oligarchs and former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich. According to her Facebook account, she previously worked for a Russian investment advisory firm named Invest AG, which manages the money of Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov. Those two own Russia’s largest steel company Evraz, and have been known to be close associates of Abramovich. Both were sanctioned by the UK in November 2022.
Financial activity was substantial. Leaked Russian banking records show nearly $60 million moved through three brokerage accounts held by Victoria in 2020-2021. Russian property files list her residence in an elite Moscow complex valued at $1 million.
Pandora Papers records show that Abramov, Frolov and several top executives of Invest AG are beneficial owners of a company called Denalot Worldwide Limited, associated in Russian media to Abramovich’s former company Highland Gold.
One of those executives at Invest AG was Sergey Bratukhin, whom Byline Times has previously reported was one of the founding members of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity. Until April 2022, Bratukhin served on the board of Norilsk Nickel, reportedly representing Abramovich’s investment vehicle Millhouse Capital.
Bratukhin has since reinvented himself as Sergey Young in Silicon Valley, where he now runs a venture capital firm called the Longevity Vision Fund. Victoria Drokova is a business development executive at Longevity Vision Fund (per her LinkedIn), marking a direct career bridge from oligarch wealth management into efforts to use tech to increase lifespan.
Prior to that Victoria co-founded the supposed women’s empowerment organisation WE Talks in 2019, alongside Epstein associate Lana Pozhidaeva.
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Epstein Girl
Lana Pozhidaeva’s background is opaque but privileged. Her father Yuriy Pozhidaev served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Russian Army. Her mother Irina resides at Moscow’s House on the Embankment – a Soviet-era elite residence.
Pozhidaeva worked as a financial analyst and reached the finals of a Maxim modelling contest. She became close to Sergei Belyakov, former Deputy Minister of Economic Development and later head of the St Petersburg Economic Forum, which runs the SPIEF Foundation.
According to the Dossier Center, it was Belyakov who drafted a letter of recommendation for Pozhiadeva to obtain an O-1 talent visa. How she met Epstein is unclear. Although Epstein frequently communicated with Belyakov, Pozhidaeva appears to have been the first of the three women to have direct contact with Epstein.
In December 2010, Pozhidaeva was pictured leaving Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. Pozhidaeva was also pictured with Epstein several times in 2013 and leaving his residence in 2016. It’s during this period, in 2014, that Bucher would launch M&A PR studio, now called MA Family, with Anastasia Shvetsova. An Inside Edition story from 2023 even referred to Pozhidaeva as his “then-girlfriend,” noting that she was his date at the 2013 Gotham Awards.
By 2014, Masha Bucher had launched M&A PR Studio (later MA Family) with Anastasia Shvetsova. Around the time Victoria and Pozhidaeva began collaborating, Bucher’s firm took Epstein as a PR client; the scope of work remains unclear.
In 2017, Pozhidaeva’s New York charity Education Advance received $55,000 from Epstein. In August 2017, a Science journalist received an email from Masha Drokova offering an interview with her client Jeffrey Epstein. During this period, Bucher was also listed as an advisor to Ghislaine Maxwell’s TerraMar Project.
A few months later, Victoria incorporated two apparent shell companies in New York and New Jersey simply called Drokova LLC. They appear to be a branch of a Drokova LLC that was incorporated in Delaware in 2016, and while they don’t appear to have conducted any business, New Jersey corporate records state that the purpose of the business was public relations.
In May 2018, Victoria Drokova and Pozhidaeva founded WE Talks. Epstein’s lawyer Darren Indyke filed the trademark paperwork. A screenshot submitted with the filing lists “Masha Drokova” among the first speakers.
Although Bucher shifted focus to investing, MA Family continued supporting WE Talks. In 2019, co-founder Anastasia Shvetsova attended the first WE Talks event in Moscow.
And while Bucher would leave MA Family to focus on investing, the PR firm continued to maintain a relationship with WE Talks. In 2019, Bucher’s PR partner Shvetsova attended the first WE Talks event in Moscow.
No criminal allegations are made against Bucher, Victoria Drokova or Pozhidaeva, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But documents reviewed by Byline Times show repeated overlap between Epstein’s PR, charity and social circles and Russian state-adjacent business networks tied into Silicon Valley capital.
Amid Senator Ron Wyden’s push to obtain Treasury records on Epstein’s Russian bank transfers, these findings raise new questions for funds and founders still linked to this money: who the limited partners were, what diligence was done, and whether sanctioned or Kremlin-aligned capital reached US tech via Jeffrey Epstein’s network.