Biden Campaign Backs Away from Gaurav Srivastava

Welcome to Whale Hunting, a weekly newsletter delving into the hidden worlds of wealth and power from the team at Project Brazen. This week, we return with the latest on alleged international con man Gaurav Srivastava's quest for money, connections and photo-ops.

By Soobin Kim and Bradley Hope

UPDATE: The Biden campaign said the $50,000 donation from Gaurav Srivastava made under false personal details has been put in escrow, reported Politico, nine hours after this story ran in Whale Hunting. The DCCC also froze almost $290,000 that it received from Srivastava in 2023. Two campaigns that received funds originating from Srivastava have said that they will donate an equivalent sum of money to charities.  

Last fall, we reported on a man named Gaurav Srivastava who pretended to be a CIA operative to allegedly fleece the sanctioned Dutch oil trader Niels Troost. The ruse was simple, according to extensive recorded conversations: hand over half your company to me, a secret spy, and I'll protect you from the US government because ... I'm a secret spy.

In the following months since our original article, it emerged that Srivastava – or "Chairman G," as he likes to be called – is a big time political donor in the United States.

• Whale Hunting can exclusively reveal that FBI agents in Los Angeles have been interviewing Srivastava’s current and former associates about his campaign donations, claims of being a federal officer and other financial affairs.
• We also confirmed from a staff member for the Washington State Democratic Party that the Biden campaign is in the process of quietly refunding thousands of dollars of his political donations.

The FBI inquiries — ongoing for last several months — may lead nowhere, but the Biden campaign’s decision to start refunding donations suggests there are deeper issues afoot for Srivastava.

“All allegations raised in this story are false," a spokesman for Srivastava told us (full statement and more details on the news after the jump).

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