Sam Corcos, the Treasury Division’s new chief data officer, is married to an investor with ties to Russian oligarchs, whereas funding healthcare ventures that might characterize a critical battle of curiosity
Serguei Beloussov, a Russian investor now often called Serg Bell, is a former enterprise social gathering of Varvara Russkova Corcos, spouse of interim Treasury Division CIO Sam Corcos. Bell, seen right here at a 2013 worldwide traders’ convention in St. Petersburg, has been beneath investigation by US intelligence based on a Washington Submit report.
(Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg through Getty Pictures)
A DOGE affiliate who was embedded on the Division of Treasury now has a prime job on the company—however his household’s enterprise ties may characterize a serious battle of curiosity, The Nation has realized. Sam Corcos based a start-up well being expertise firm with Casey Means, whom President Trump not too long ago tapped as his nominee for surgeon normal, and now Corcos has been appointed interim chief information officer at Treasury. But Corcos has presumably did not disclose his spouse’s personal in depth monetary ties to the healthcare business—in addition to her enterprise dealings with no less than one Russian oligarch beneath investigation from American intelligence brokers.
A extremely positioned supply, who requested anonymity out of concern {of professional} reprisals, mentioned that there have been discussions contained in the company about naming Corcos to the place completely later this 12 months.
In February, Corcos stuffed out a compulsory new entrant public monetary disclosure report that requires new authorities hires to reveal a partner’s belongings and earnings over $1,000. Corcos left the section for his wife, Varvara Russkova Corcos, clean, however Russkova Corcos has spent the previous couple of years presenting herself because the managing accomplice of a enterprise capital agency that invests in well being expertise firms. She continues to maintain that job title on her LinkedIn profile and was commenting as an energetic investor on LinkedIn as recently as one month ago. Two weeks in the past, Corcos filed an modification to his disclosure, including an funding his spouse holds for a well being start-up that’s funded by the Division of Protection.
Russkova Corcos beforehand labored for a sanctioned Russian oligarch named Suleyman Kerimov, and after Treasury officers blocked the belief funding his investments due to his shut ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, she went on to create her personal enterprise capital agency. Instantly earlier than she shaped that firm, she was managing one other Kremlin-linked Russian expertise investor’s household workplace. That concern additionally scouted funding alternatives in well being expertise.
That Russian investor, Serg Bell, previously often called Serguei Beloussov, was beneath investigation by US intelligence as not too long ago as 2022, according to a report in The Washington Submit.
It’s inconceivable to know whether or not Russkova Corcos has further unreported present earnings or belongings that Corcos didn’t disclose. Nevertheless it’s clear that her healthcare pursuits, along with the unknown nature of her investments and her ties to a number of Russian traders sanctioned or investigated by US businesses elevate a possible purple flag.
Present Problem
Kel McClanahan, the manager director of Nationwide Safety Counselors, who represents shoppers now suing DOGE, argues that Corcos’s elevation doesn’t cross the odor check, even in a Trump administration that’s already steeped in corrupt conflicts of curiosity. “It’s clearly an enormous battle of curiosity for somebody with such vital financial ties to a hostile overseas nation to be any stage of officer within the Treasury Division,” McClanahan mentioned.
Russkova Corcos mentioned in an e-mailed assertion: “Earlier than my husband entered authorities service, I exited all of my positions within the enterprise agency to keep away from any potential conflicts and to adjust to relevant ethics necessities. We not too long ago realized that one small, residual place had been inadvertently omitted from the unique disclosure. As quickly as we turned conscious of the oversight, we filed an amended 278e to appropriate the file. Transparency and compliance are crucial to us, and we’ve labored intently with ethics officers to make sure all the pieces is so as.”
Corcos has not responded to requests for remark. E-mails to the Treasury Division, DOGE and the White Home weren’t returned.
The modification to Corcos’s disclosure lists Russkova Corcos’s holdings in a medical system firm known as Sana Well being. The corporate’s web site says, “The Division of Protection has granted Sana Well being a $3.4 million grant to conduct a pivotal examine on PTSD by way of the primary quarter of 2026.”
Corcos detailed that his spouse has realized a carried-interest return of 20 % of the earnings on a $150,000 funding within the firm from a special-purpose automobile fund, indicating she was probably a fund supervisor for a number of traders within the firm.
Corcos was named as one of many Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) representatives at the IRS and on the Treasury in early March, and promptly accessed an enormous trove of delicate personal taxpayer data. Corcos additionally reportedly used his DOGE credential to plan to enlist a third-party vendor to launch a “hackathon” on the IRS to achieve entry to taxpayer information.
Corcos’s personal firm, Ranges Well being, the analytic platforms he based with surgeon normal nominee Casey Means, seeks to develop well being profiles based mostly on consumer metabolic information: “With greater than 700 million glucose information factors and a whole lot of 1000’s of meals logs, Ranges leverages its large information set to supply personalised insights to members, backed by our panel of knowledgeable advisors,” a 2024 press launch from the corporate detailed. Josh Clemente, a former engineer at Elon Musk’s SpaceX agency, can also be a Ranges founder.
Ranges obtained seed and Sequence A funding from Andreessen Horowitz, a enterprise capital agency led by Marc Andreessen, a key MAGA ally in Silicon Valley. Ranges has thus far raised $55 million from its preliminary public funding rounds, however most of the firm’s traders are unknown.
Russkova Corcos started searching for Silicon Valley funding for Russian start-ups way back to 2010. By 2012, she was working for a Russian firm known as CardioWave financed by the Russian Enterprise Firm, as she recounted in an article she wrote for a Russian tech website. She relocated to Boston from Moscow not lengthy after the agency gained the MassChallenge start-up accelerator competitors, based on her résumé.
The Russian Enterprise Firm would later be sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2022, and was considered one of a number of Russian expertise initiatives that American intelligence tracked that 12 months to find out whether or not it was was a part of a covert operation to help Russia in growing quantum and AI tech by funding a community of American start-ups, based on The Washington Submit’s investigation.
Russkova Corcos then went on to work for Kerimov, turning into a enterprise accomplice to a Silicon Valley enterprise capital agency, GVA Capital. A later investigation discovered that GVA was transferring Kerimov’s cash into San Francisco–space companies from a secretive DC belief. In April 2018, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on Kerimov; Russkova Corcos remained a GVA Capital accomplice till December 2018.
Kerimov has close ties to Putin—the European Union has mentioned Kerimov, value virtually $10 billion, is a part of Putin’s inside circle. The federal regulators who’d blocked Kerimov from tendering additional investments in america have been based mostly on the Treasury Division, the place Russkova Corcos’s husband is now a prime official. Final 12 months, the Justice Division, the FBI, and the IRS positioned Citigroup under investigation for its dealing with of Kerimov’s belongings.
Whereas working with Kerimov, Russkova Corcos targeted “on the confluence of AI, healthcare, and blockchain expertise,” based on a 2019 interview.
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Simply three months after Russkova Corcos left GVA Capital, she started working for an additional suspected Kremlin-linked businessman, Serguei Beloussov, as investment director for his Luxembourg-based family office, Arici Lux Sarl. Beloussov, now based mostly in Singapore, modified his identify to Serg Bell in 2021.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Russian funding in Silicon Valley turned extra controversial. Masha Bucher, one other considered one of Bell’s enterprise capitalist protégées based mostly in america, started to distance herself from the Russian traders she had earlier touted. Bucher was well-known in Russia as a youthful devotee to Putin, even showing in a documentary kissing him, based on studies.
Russkova Corcos’s LinkedIn profile says she was at Arici from 2019 till December 2020. In a biography for a June 2020 podcast she participated in, she described the funding work she did for Bell:
The household workplace is represented globally, investing primarily within the US/UK/EU. Investing in AI, well being tech and sport tech. An knowledgeable in enterprise growth, beforehand a start-up founder (medical system). Captivated with shifting well being care from sick care to precise healthcare and wellness, with the assistance of linked gadgets, exact diagnostics and predictive analytics.
Her LinkedIn profile additionally lists positions at two different Bell-founded corporations: director of life science at Acronis and director of enterprise growth at Schaffhausen Institute of Know-how, now Constructor Institute, between June 2019 and December 2020.
Russkova Corcos was shut sufficient to Bell to be described in a UK lawsuit as working as Bell’s direct consultant to funding companions, handling his e-mail correspondence in April 2019..
Along with founding Acronis, Bell has additionally launched a enterprise capital agency, Runa Capital. Putin’s digital growth envoy, Dmitry Peskov, has pressured Bell’s strategic significance for Russian pursuits. “Acronis groups, even in personal, do rather a lot for the nation,” Peskov mentioned in 2019. “The function, for instance, of Serguei Beloussov, the chief of the Acronis crew, in launching a big state-owned quantum computing system in Russia isn’t very public now, however it can’t be overestimated.”
In a June 2020 podcast, Russkova Corcos defined her work leading Bell’s family office investments. “We deal with well being tech,” she mentioned, including that she can also be “driving help of life science effort[s] for start-ups” for Acronis. She additionally mentions “a private funding” she had in an organization related to one Acronis partnered with. Bell has denied that he maintains shut ties to the Kremlin.
Three months after leaving her three positions at Bell’s firms, based on her résumé, Russkova Corcos started selling her personal new VC agency and herself as an investor in healthcare expertise.
The web footprint for that VC company, ATTA Ventures, is minimal. There is no such thing as a American company registration by that identify, nor any with Russkova Corcos’s maiden or married names. The agency has not disclosed any investments or traders publicly.
A former worker of ATTA Ventures informed The Nation that Russkova Corcos labored with traders she pulled from her community, principally from Asia and the United Arab Emirates, though their precise identities have been “secret.”
Russkova Corcos continues to touch upon LinkedIn as an energetic investor; the web site for ATTA Ventures stays dwell, though not up to date because it launched in 2021, and her ATTA Ventures e-mail deal with stays energetic.
If Corcos have been to turn into a daily authorities worker, the conventional protocol can be for Treasury’s ethics counsel to evaluation his and his partner’s monetary holdings for any conflicts of curiosity. However Trump’s administration has dismantled many primary protections in opposition to overseas affect—considered one of US Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi’s first strikes was to disband the FBI activity pressure that countered the affect of hostile overseas governments in American politics. So a DOGE official who has already commandeered huge tranches of delicate Treasury information might be heading in the right direction to have the federal forms fully disregard an array of compromising monetary information inside his circle of relatives.
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