Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a Trump administration adviser on intelligence issues who recently stepped down from two senior national security positions, previously helped her father secure at least $12 million from a Russian investment bank that cooperated with the Kremlin, leaked documents show.

Kennedy, a former CIA officer, was involved in the deal in 2009 and 2010 as head of an offshore corporation owned by her father. She was employed as a spy during those years, according to media reporting.

The documents show that as president of the British Virgin Islands-registered Helios Enterprises Limited, Kennedy was involved in an effort on behalf of her father, Hodson Thornber, to pressure a Moscow-based investment bank to fulfill a 2008 agreement to pay roughly $30 million for Helios’ shares in a large Ukrainian agricultural company. The Russian bank, Renaissance Capital, included former senior Russian intelligence officers in its top ranks.

Kennedy told ICIJ that she was appointed Helios’ president as she was preparing to leave government service, and in that position worked with her father to identify investments in consumer technology startups. She said that any involvement she had in the dispute with Renaissance Capital was “pro forma,” and that she “had no knowledge of or involvement in” the  dispute or the business project in general.

“I lived in the United States the entire time I worked for Helios and never worked on any deals related to the farm business or Ukraine,” she wrote. “I’ve never met any of the people involved, nor ever visited Ukraine.”

She is also the daughter-in-law of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and managed his 2024 presidential campaign. In one podcast appearance, he called her “the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/05/intelligence-official-amaryllis-fox-kennedy-a-gabbard-ally-leaves-two-jobs/

Politics Intelligence official Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a Gabbard ally, leaves two jobs May 19, 2026

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In November 2008, Renaissance Capital agreed to purchase Helios’ shares in UAFL for roughly $30 million in three installments in 2008 and 2009. The deal came during the global financial crisis, which impaired banks worldwide and plunged Renaissance into crisis.

As the crisis unfolded, Thornber began to pressure the investment bank to make good on its commitment to buy his shares. In January 2009, Kennedy, as president of Helios, wrote to Renaissance Capital to formally request Thornber’s appointment to UAFL’s board of directors, which was Helios’s prerogative under the shareholders agreement.

Thornber said in an interview that he did not remember being appointed to UAFL’s board. Helios was dissolved in May 2025, according to British Virgin Islands corporate records.

According to the documents, Thornber used his position as UAFL director to demand access to correspondence and financial transactions related to his dispute with Renaissance. When the bank took too long to provide access to certain records, he sent his lawyers unannounced to the BVI offices of the firm’s corporate services provider to inspect them.

The U.S. and its key intelligence partners say that China’s military intelligence services are using online job platforms and networking sites to lure foreigners who have access to sensitive information.

In a bulletin released this week, the so-called Five Eyes alliance warned that Chinese intelligence officers were posing as recruiters on LinkedIn and other sites to target government and military personnel as well as journalists and academics who could have access to classified or privileged information. The Five Eyes include domestic security agencies from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand

The officers build relationships with job candidates and may offer targets money in exchange for reports on topics of interest to the Chinese government, including defense and trade, according to the bulletin. Their goal is to “ultimately seek to acquire privileged military, political and economic intelligence that can provide China with a strategic and tactical advantage over the Five Eyes,” the bulletin said.

The warning echoes the experience of reporters with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who were recently approached by these purported recruiters. After ICIJ published China Targets, an investigation into China’s transnational repression, the targets began receiving suspicious emails and messages on LinkedIn.

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Federal authorities in Mexico seized vials labeled as Keytruda, the world’s bestselling drug, during an operation to dismantle a counterfeit ring in a suburb outside of the capital city, sources with direct knowledge of the raid told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Friday. This is the second operation that has led to arrests where vials labeled as the cancer medication were seized.

In a joint operation in March, Mexico’s security ministry, Secretariat of the Navy (known as  SEMAR) and the Attorney General’s office seized 15,000 doses of clonazepam, more than 100 counterfeit vaccines and 1,000 vaccine labels, believed to be used to produce falsified medication, according to an April press release. They also found guns, cocaine and five vials labeled Keytruda, two sources told ICIJ. Merck could not confirm whether the vials were real or counterfeit.

Keytruda, known generically as pembrolizumab, has been a game changer in cancer treatment — with a price to match. ICIJ’s Cancer Calculus investigation, published in April, revealed how the high cost of the drug has fueled demand for counterfeits.

Vials that appear to be labeled as Keytruda found in a raid by Mexican authorities in the town of Huixquilucan. Image: Mexico Security Ministry

The investigation, which brought together reporters in 37 countries, exposed the inner workings of a system that protects pharmaceutical pricing monopolies and prioritizes profit over access. Keytruda is produced by the pharmaceutical company Merck and Co., known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada.

In Mexico, reporters from Quinto Elemento Lab, El País, El Sol de México and Univision found that falsified vials of the cancer drug were supplied to public hospitals through medication distributors that, at times, do not comply with national health standards. One patient died while being infused with fake Keytruda, Merck confirmed as part of ICIJ’s previous reporting. Another patient, whose case was documented by Univision, claimed to suffer painful side effects after being administered falsified Keytruda twice in a public hospital in Mérida, the largest city in the state of Yucatán.

Only Merck can confirm if vials are authentic or counterfeit, since the patented formula is known only to the company. The five vials seized in the March raid remain in the custody of authorities and have not yet been provided to MSD for analysis, Anthony Zook, associate vice president for MSD Global Security, said in a statement to ICIJ.

“Therefore, we are not in a position to confirm their authenticity or whether they are genuine or falsified,” Zook said. “We continue to closely monitor the situation and stand ready to support the authorities should our technical expertise be requested.”

Two people, a man and a woman, were arrested during the March raid in the town of Huixquilucan, 59 miles west of Mexico City, according to the press release.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/cancer-calculus/cancer-drug-counterfeits-keytruda-immunotherapy/

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