A federal investigation into the business interests of the Republican majority leader of the state Senate, Joseph Bruno, is reportedly connected to a land deal involving Mr. Bruno and a veteran Albany lobbyist who is one of the senator’s closest friends.

The lobbyist, James Featherstonhaugh, told the Associated Press yesterday that federal investigators asked him to supply records of an apparently unsuccessful real estate venture in eastern Rensselaer County, First Grafton Corp., a company that dissolved last year.

“I did receive a request for some records and those records have been provided,” Mr. Featherstonhaugh told the Associated Press.

On Tuesday, Mr. Bruno, 77, who is the most powerful Republican in Albany, announced that he was the subject of an FBI investigation into his outside business interests. He said he is cooperating with authorities but did not know details of the probe. Federal officials have refused to comment on the inquiry.

Mr. Featherstonhaugh and Douglas Rutnik, a lobbyist who is the father of Rep.-elect Kirsten Gillibrand, reportedly established First Grafton Corp. in the late 1980s, buying hundreds of acres of isolated swampland near Grafton.

After initial investors dropped out of the partnership with little of the land developed, Mr. Bruno, his brother Peter, and a Glenn Falls businessman Richard Carota invested in the venture, the Times Union reported. The newspaper reported that First Grafton bulldozed the land and built a 1.7-mile road without required permits from the Department of Environmental Conservation, prompting federal and state lawsuits that delayed development.

The Times Union reported in July 2005 that Mr. Bruno blocked the Senate from voting on wetlands legislation, the Clean Water Protection/Flood Protection Act, which would have further restricted development.

The newspaper reported that Mr. Bruno in the early 1990s removed himself from the board of directors and put his one-fourth stock ownership of First Grafton in a blind trust after his involvement in the venture raised conflict of interest questions. Mr. Featherstonhaugh has told reporters that Mr. Bruno has had no influence over First Grafton since the creation of the trust.

Mr. Featherstonhaugh sold parcels of the land to individuals that included Mr. Bruno’s son, one-time lobbyist Kenneth Bruno, and a girlfriend of the son, lobbyist Theresa Russo, the newspaper reported. The wife of businessman Jared Abbruzzese, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in state grants approved by Mr. Bruno, also bought a 12-acre plot.

A Massachusetts real estate developer, David Lipinski, last year purchased the remaining 500 acres of property for $800,000 in what Mr. Lipinksi described to The New York Sun as an “arms-length transaction.” He said he never met Mr. Bruno.

“Senator Bruno has no interest in, nor did he participate in, any land sales or other activities with First Grafton because his interest was in a blind trust,” a spokesman for Mr. Bruno told the Times Union in 2005.

Mr. Featherstonhaugh reportedly said he and Mr. Rutnik lost $100,000 on the venture, and Mr. Bruno and other investors lost a “substantial amount.”

The younger Mr. Bruno purchased a tract of the land for $44,000. He reportedly used a $50,000 unsecured bank loan to pay back his father who helped him pay off a construction loan on a mansion built on the land.

In his divorce proceedings, the younger Mr. Bruno listed the loan as a liability, rather than a gift, a maneuver that the paper said prevented his wife, Mary Beth Bruno, from claiming her share as an asset.

In divorce filings in 2004, Ms. Bruno accused Kenneth Bruno of concealing commissions on land deals that were “brought to the table by his father Joseph L. Bruno,” according to a court document obtained by the Times Union. She reportedly persuaded state Supreme Court Justice Leslie Stein to authorize the subpoena of records of First Grafton to uncover details about the alleged commissions.