Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent behind the salacious dossier on US President Donald Trump, earned nearly $600,000, the Daily Mail reported.
According to the report, accounts for Steele’s company Orbis Business International disclose that he and his business partner Christopher Burrows shared £868,000 (nearly $1.2 million) in dividend payouts over two years.
They each own 50 percent of the company, which means they received £434,000 ($590,000) each.
In addition, Steele and Burrows also run another company Orbis Intelligence Limited, which more than doubled its profits last year and paid dividends to Orbis Business International, which in turn paid the money to the owners, according to the Daily Mail.
The Trump-Russia dossier was first published by BuzzFeed a few days before his inauguration in January, 2017.
READ MORE: Firm Behind Trump Dossier Offered Stories About Trump to Media — Reports
Fusion GPS was originally hired to do research during the 2016 Republican primary campaign for a still unknown Republican donor who wanted to defeat Trump.
In particular, the document alleged that the Russian government had compromising information on Trump, which has been denied by the US president and called a forgery by Moscow.
In December, Trump called the dossier "bogus" and a "Crooked Hillary pile of garbage" which his opponents tried to use to derail his campaign.
At the moment, two separate probes — dubbed a "witch hunt" by the US president — are being conducted by the US Senate and Special Counsel Robert Mueller into the Trump campaign's alleged "collusion" with Moscow, a claim that has been called "groundless" by the Kremlin.
