Joe Biden's pick for Comptroller of the Currency Saule Omarova was an ardent Young Communist who was 'born in a yurt' - a traditional tent in the Kazakhstan steppe - who fled the Soviet Union for America and allegedly left behind an unpaid debt to a friend at Moscow State University.
An exclusive new picture shows tango-dancing Omarova, 54, as a student at the prestigious Russian educational institution alongside a crowd of classmates and teachers in the Gorbachev era of 1988 after her childhood where she grew up as head of her local Komsomol.
At university, she wrote the thesis: Karl Marx's Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital. She now appears to have wiped it from her resume and top Senate Republicans want her to hand it over for her confirmation hearings to head the regulatory agency overseeing the country's largest banks.
Her past academic work advocating for moving Americans' financial accounts from private banks to the Federal Reserve and for forcing banks to lose leverage on federal subsidies by becoming 'non-depository lenders' has drawn a fierce response from the GOP and the banking community.
American Banking Association CEO Rob Nichols told : ' We have serious concerns about her ideas for fundamentally restructuring the nation’s banking system which remains the most diverse and competitive in the world. Her proposals to effectively nationalize America’s community banks, end regulatory tailoring based on risk and eliminate the dual banking system are particularly troubling.'
Now, DailyMail.com can reveal more about her childhood in the USSR that includes growing up on a street named after Vladimir Lenin, taking on a scholarship in his name and getting involved in an alleged spat with a roommate over $50.
Among her friends in the glasnost USSR was Olga Cassidy who claims this woman - who the president wants in charge of the dollar and then studying 'Scientific Communism', and writing a thesis on' - still owes her an unpaid debt for a dorm scam.
The amount - around $50 - may not seem excessive by today's standards, but in 1987, things were different.
Some 34 years on, it still grates with her former friend, as we found in an in-depth investigation into the past of Professor Sauna Omarova in the former Soviet Union.
Olga - now in New Zealand - lived with her parents in a secret scientific town near Moscow, and did not need to take up her place in the student dorm accommodation.
Saule Omarova (circled) is photographed during her studies at Moscow State University, in Russia in 1988 when Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union . She studied under a scholarship named after Vladimir Lenin and wrote a thesis on Karl Marx, which Republicans are now trying to get a copy of
If approved by Congress, the tango-dancing professor will be, at Biden's behest, the first woman and non-white to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which is within the Treasury Department
Though a devout communist at the time, Saule worked out that if Olga claimed her place in the two-room dorm, but did not use it, then Saule would have a prestigious room all to herself.
More than a generation on, Olga spoke to DailyMail.com with undisguised fury about their student conflict.
'With bitter tears and pleas, Saule exhorted me to get us a place in a two-bed student dorm, which I absolutely did not need, but was entitled to,' she explained.
'I could not resist Saule, who vowed to pay me for the 'dead soul' in the dorm so she could live in peace without unnecessary neighbors'.
Olga Cassidy claims Omarova still owes her $50 after she gave up her dorm at Moscow State University. Omarova's mother is pictured on the right
So Olga paid from her pittance of a scholarship for Saule's room, she said, while her erstwhile friend 'lived in conditions of increased comfort'.
The cost amounted to around $50 for the academic year at the then official exchange rate to the basketcase Soviet rouble.
But the notional value hid the true cost to Olga of an arrangement which she said cost her perhaps 15 per cent of her meagre student stipend.
She confronted Omarova about the money, expecting to be reimbursed, she told us.
'I finally managed to ask Saule, who had been avoiding me, about the monetary debt accumulated over the whole school year,' said Olga with ill-concealed angst over an event long ago.
'She suffered an amnesia attack and fled.'
With a large dollop of sarcasm, Olga said: 'So I have no doubt that Saule will succeed in her new position in America.
'For me back then, a young girl from a family of intellectuals, it was a downright shock how she behaved.
'And since then I had no further communication with Saule.'
The backyard of karaoke bar at the address where Saule Omarova lived as a child, 190 Prospekt Lenina, Uralsk ( now Oral), Kazakhstan, in the former USSR
A copy of the register from Omarova's school says she was a member of the Komsomol, or 'Young Communists' in the USSR
This is just one of many revelations about Omarova - today a Cornell Law School professor - who has turned into a highly controversial Biden nominee for the critical economic role.
A top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, Pat Toomey, Pa., has written a letter to Omarova asking her to turn over a copy of her thesis, 'Karl Marx's Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital.'
Toomey noted that Omarova scrubbed reference to the paper on her resume sometime after April 2017.
The senator said of Biden's nominee: 'I don't think I've ever seen a more radical choice for any regulatory spot in our federal government.'
'She clearly has an aversion to anything like free market capitalism.'
Our investigation shows there is little doubt that back in the USSR, Saule was the archetypal Lenin loyalist destined to go far had the Communist world not crumbled, as it happened, while she was on a semester-long exchange in Wisconsin.
She did not return to the Soviet Union yet has professed guilt at not doing so, instead forging her way in the capitalist US.
Yet in her native Kazakhstan - now independent - and in Russia, where she completed her undergraduate degree - she has left a trail that will raise some eyebrows in Washington DC.
A friend, for example, recalled her as a student assiduously working in a student labour gang digging potatoes near Moscow, a ritual expected of all Party adherents.
If approved by Congress, the tango-dancing professor will be, at Biden's behest, the first woman and non-white to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is within the Treasury Department.
Her first academic success came at School Number 21 in Uralsk, now known as Oral, close to the Russian border in Kazakhstan.
She grew up in cramped communal conditions on Prospekt Lenina - named after Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin - and while little is known of her father Tarif, her mother Saida Alibayeva was a tuberculosis doctor, born in 1940 into a family of medics.
'It was her mother who raised her,' said a friend.
The account about this TB doctor giving birth to her daughter Saule in a Kazakh tent comes from Professor Adam Levitin, of Georgetown University Law Center.
'Saule…has an inspiring personal story,' he Tweeted.
Saule Omarova, a Cornell Law School professor, has been nominated to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Republican Senator Pat Toomey (right) said this week 'she clearly has an aversion to anything like free market capitalism'
Saule Omarova is photographed dancing (left) at a 2008 charity event. Omarova explained once how she went to the US to study for a month, missing a revolution her university classes had never foreseen - the collapse of the Soviet Union
'She was born in a yurt in Kazakhstan in the former Soviet Union.
'She managed to matriculate at Moscow State University (that's a big deal if you're coming from the Soviet boonies), and then came to the US for a PhD and a JD.
'She's also an excellent tango dancer.'
The school register in Uralsk indicates that Saule Omarova at the age of 17 was a proud member of the Komsomol - the Young Communists, without mentioning if she was born in a yurt, a story some here say is apocryphal.
Yet Saule was the school's Komsomol leader, the most diehard of her generation.
The school at the time was packed with the children of favoured Party members.
A family friend from the time, Erken Bulegenov, 52, who attended the same school, said Omarova was such an ardent Communist that she led her academy's Komsomol, the ruling party's youth movement.
'She never dated anyone at school or university,' he recalled. 'She was too busy with her studies.'
Saule prospered even though 'her mom had to re-sew her clothes so she looked better', said another contemporary.
The same year - 1984 - she graduated from school with the highest marks, and with a rare gold medal, the ultimate badge of honour for Soviet students, clearly picked out for a fast-tracked future in the USSR.
Laura Sharkubenova, current school director who was unaware of her high-flying alumni in the US, said: 'I don't know anything about the family unfortunately.
'I see from the register her mother's name. She worked in a tuberculosis clinic.
'We don't have a single teacher left on the staff who might have taught Saule.
'But I know for sure she graduated with a gold medal - we have this data.'
Her father is believed to have been a high-flying medic too, though absent from much of her childhood.
At Moscow State University, she won a scholarship named after Lenin: she couldn't have been seen as more loyal to the cause.
'At university, she didn't attend any parties,' said Bulegenov. 'She was travelling between classes, her dorm and the library.'
Karaoke bar at the address where Saule Omarova lived as a child, 190 Prospekt Lenina, Uralsk (now Oral), Kazakhstan, in the former USSR
Here she is remembered as exceptionally talented and also ambitious as she studied scientific communism in the philosophy faculty - but also had a way with money which may come in handy as she prepares to supervise all US national banks and federal savings associations as well as federal branches and agencies of foreign banks, as the story of her alleged dorm scam perhaps proves.
A friend in her dorm block was Olga Lakhina, 54, a Moscow-based art exhibitions curator, who confirmed Omarova studied scientific communism - described as the science regarding the working-class struggle and the socialist revolution.
Being unquestioning communists, they went harvesting potatoes together in labour gangs sent to the fields in autumn, along with soldiers and workers.
'Those were very cheerful times,' remembered Lakhina.
'When we started our first year at university, aerobics had just arrived in the USSR..
'We were among the first in Moscow to have aerobics in PE classes… Saule and I were lucky.
'We passed the selection process, and we were in the first-ever aerobics group at Moscow State University.
'Our first performance was with hull hoops. We wore beautiful green leotards that we dyed ourselves because only white leotards were sold back then.
'Saule was petite, slim, just like she is now. She has been into dancing all her life. Saule has always been great at studies, at sports. She is persistent, focused, hardworking.'
But another ex-classmate Dr Igor Lyagushkin, 54, now a philosophy lecturer at another university, has fond memories of Omarova.
'Saule was always friendly, even-tempered, and well-integrated in the student group,' he said.
'But she could not have been just a regular pupil to enter the philosophy department.
'In 1983 Yury Andropov (ex-KGB chief who went on to lead the Soviet Union) introduced a special admission procedure for those entering certain programmes, including philosophy, political communism, and some others.
School Number 21 in Uralsk (now Oral), Kazakhstan, where Omarova started her education and her route to Cornell University and potentially a role in the Biden administration
'To qualify, the applicant [among other things] needed to be recommended by a local regional committee of the Communist Party.
'They needed to be known for their achievements, so she could not be a regular pupil.'
He recalled: 'She had an unsullied reputation, was always friendly, and had a good sense of humour.
'She was into aerobics and dancing.
'University teachers liked her, she was a good student.'
He said it was around ten years since he saw her at an annual graduates party in Moscow.
'I am sincerely happy for her - she is a decent person, and she had the courage to face new challenges.
'I have only good memories about her, she is a supportive, kind-hearted, and a sincere person.
Another Moscow classmate Elena Pestresova, now living in Crimea, said: 'I remember her being incredibly determined, sincere, and kind-hearted.
'You know, there are people who know from the start what they want from life, what quality of life [they want], she's one of them.
Omarova travelled to the United States in 1991 and was only supposed to complete one semester of University. But in December of that year, the USSR was disbanded. Protesters gather in Moscow to push for Gorbachev's resignation in 1991
'It's very sad that this is not happening in our country.'
Saule herself explained once how she went to the US to study for a month, missing a revolution her university classes had never foreseen - the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The expert in Marxist-Leninism stayed in America.
'There was at the very end of the Gorbachev era an exchange program between Moscow State and University of Wisconsin Madison,' she said.
'I got lucky against all odds, and I came for that one semester in 1991 to Madison, Wisconsin.
'While I was there in December of 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart.
'So there I was, a student without anywhere to go back.
'I was very worried about what was going to happen. So I stayed to do my Ph.D. in political science, but frankly, I'm just...
'To this day, I feel guilty for having left the country at such a momentous time, because obviously they couldn't hold it together without me.'
Social media pictures show that she kept dancing after going to the US.
She married Timur Han Uckun, 57, an IT security and risk assurance executive who works at Cornell University. They have a son.
Her mother went to live with her in the States after retiring as a doctor in Kazakhstan, say former colleagues.
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