I never doubted that he was involved with Russian criminals. He's always been
involved with criminals. I just don't see the connection to the Russian
government. There's as much connection as there has always been with the
American mob and the US government, like the Kennedy's and the mob in dealing
with Cuba.
Miriam
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Donald Trump Was Bailed Out of Bankruptcy by Russia Crime Bosses
________________________________________
Donald Trump Was Bailed Out of Bankruptcy by Russia Crime Bosses
By Mark Sumner [1] / Daily Kos [2]
January 10, 2017
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. attended a real estate conference, where he stated
that [3]
Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our
assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.
As it turns out, that may have been an understatement. Human rights lawyer
Scott Horton [4], whose work in the region goes back to defending Andrei
Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents, has gone through a series of studies by
the Financial Times [5] to show how funds from Russian crime lords bailed Trump
out after yet anther bankruptcy. The conclusions are stark. [6]
Among the powerful facts that DNI missed were a series of very deep studies
published in the [Financial Times] that examined the structure and history of
several major Trump real estate projects from the last decade—the period after
his seventh bankruptcy and the cancellation of all his bank lines of credit. ...
The money to build these projects flowed almost entirely from Russian sources.
In other words, after his business crashed, Trump was floated and made to
appear to operate a successful business enterprise through the infusion of
hundreds in millions of cash from dark Russian sources.
He was their man.
Yes, even that much seems fantastic, and the details include business agencies
acting as a front for the GRU, billionaire mobsters, a vast network of
propaganda sources, and an American candidate completely under the thumb of the
Kremlin.
It reads like the a B-grade spy novel, a plot both too convoluted—and too
bluntly obvious—for John le Carré. The problem is it may not be a conspiracy
theory. It may be a conspiracy.
Horton’s analysis comes from piecing together information in three Financial
Times “deep reports.” One of these focused on Sergei Millian [7], the head of
the Russian American Chamber of Commerce in the US at the time of Trump Jr.’s
“money pouring in from Russia” claim.
Mr Millian insists his Russian American Chamber of Commerce (RACC) has nothing
to do with the Russian government. He says it is funded by payments from its
commercial members alone.
Most of the board members are obscure entities and nearly half of their
telephone numbers went unanswered when called by the Financial Times. An FT
reporter found no trace of the Chamber of Commerce at the Wall Street address
listed on its website.
Why was RACC’s background filled with so many holes? The Financial Times quotes
former Russian MP Konstantin Borovoi in tagging the chamber as a front for
intelligence operations that dates back to Soviet times.
“The chamber of commerce institutions are the visible part of the agent network
. . . Russia has spent huge amounts of money on this.”
Millian helped arrange for Trump to visit Moscow in 2007, and had other outings
with Trump in the states, including a visit to horse races in Miami. Millian
claims that he had the right to market Trump properties in Russia.
“You could say I was their exclusive broker,” he told Ria. “Then, in 2007-2008,
dozens of Russians bought apartments in Trump properties in the US.” He later
told ABC television that the Trump Organisation had received “hundreds of
millions of dollars” through deals with Russian businessmen.
Despite documents and photos showing Trump with Millian, Trump denied their
association during the campaign.
Hope Hicks, Mr Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, said Mr Trump had “met and spoke”
with Mr Millian only “on one occasion almost a decade ago at a hotel opening”.
The second Financial Times article [8] puts Trump at the middle of a money
laundering scheme, in which his real estate deals were used to hide not just an
infusion of capital from Russia and former Soviet states, but to launder
hundreds of millions looted by oligarchs. All Trump had to do was close his
eyes to the source of the money, and suddenly empty apartments were going for
top dollar.
Among the dozens of companies the Almaty lawyers say the Khrapunov laundering
network used were three called Soho 3310, Soho 3311 and Soho 3203. Each was a
limited liability company, meaning their ownership could easily be concealed.
The companies were created in April 2013 in New York. A week later, property
records show, they paid a total of $3.1m to buy the apartments that
corresponded with their names in the Trump Soho, a 46-storey luxury
hotel-condominium completed in 2010 in a chic corner of Manhattan.
Why would Trump’s organization make such a good means of laundering funds?
Because real estate has an arbitrary value. Is that apartment worth $1 million?
Two million? Why not $3 million for a buyer who really wants it? When the whole
transaction is just one LLC with undisclosed ownership paying another LLC with
undisclosed ownership, it’s even neater than hiding the money in an offshore
account. And while some businesses require due diligence in looking at the
source of funds, real estate is a bit more … flexible.
The laws regulating US real estate deals are scant, experts say. Provisions
against terrorism financing in the Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of the
September 11 2001 attacks, obliged mortgage lenders to conduct “know your
customer” research. But money launderers pay in cash. Sales such as those of
the Trump Soho apartments have passed through this loophole, which was
partially closed only this year.
Converting funds stolen overseas into property in the US and cash in the
account of an LLC represented a win for both the oligarchs and Trump. Best of
all, Trump’s sole requirement was that he pay scant attention to the
deal—something at which he was already a proven master. For example, the actual
owners of the Trump Soho were another limited liability company, Bayrock. Trump
was a partner in the LLC and Bayrock cut the checks Trump received when those
apartments were sold. And yet ...
In a 2011 deposition, given in a dispute over the Fort Lauderdale project, Mr
Trump said he had “never really understood who owned Bayrock”. Jody Kriss, a
former Bayrock finance director, has claimed in racketeering lawsuits against
his former employer that Bayrock’s backers included “hidden interests in Russia
and Kazakhstan”. Bayrock has denied Mr Kriss’s allegations but declined to
answer questions about the source of its funds and its relationship with the
Khrapunovs.
The third article [9]digs more deeply into the origins of Bayrock and its
connection with Trump. That connection … was very close.
The Republican presidential nominee and Bayrock were both based in Trump Tower
and they joined forces to pursue deals around the world — from New York,
Florida, Arizona and Colorado in the US to Turkey, Poland, Russia and Ukraine.
Their best-known collaboration — Trump SoHo, a 46-storey hotel-condominium
completed in 2010 — was featured in Mr Trump’s NBC television show The
Apprentice.
This is the same group about which Trump said he “never really understood” the
ownership.
“I don’t know who owns Bayrock,” Mr Trump said. “I never really understood who
owned Bayrock. I know they’re a developer that’s done quite a bit of work. But
I don’t know how they have their ownership broken down.”
At the very least, Trump confessed to partnering with, taking money from, and
acting as a representative for a corporation whose ownership he didn’t know, in
deals that totaled hundreds of millions in countries around the world. However,
it seems far more likely that Trump knowingly worked with oligarchs, groups
associated with the Russian government, and plain old mobsters. Why? Because he
was desperate.
By the 2000s, the property developer and casino owner with ready access to the
capital markets and the biggest New York banks was no more. A series of
corporate bankruptcies had limited his financing options. Mr Trump had become
an entertainer who portrayed a tycoon on television and licensed his name to
businesses looking for a brand, leading to fee-making opportunities as
disparate as Trump University and Trump Vodka.
The Trump Organization was a hollow shell and Trump was bankrupt, but Donald
Trump the public figure was a “successful businessman,” a screen behind which
criminal activity could be carried out on a massive scale. Throwing his name at
every scheme in existence wasn’t a strategy, it was a fire sale on Trump’s
respectability. Steaks? Water? Vodka? Fake real estate school? You pony up the
cash, and Trump will slap his name on it. Because by the early 2000s, Trump
wasn’t just broke, he had nothing left to pawn. He wasn’t a successful
businessman, but he still played one on TV. His image had more value than his
real estate portfolio.
But the apartments and buildings where Trump held some degree of ownership
could be turned into value again. All it took was partnering with foreign crime
bosses looking for a place to stash their cash. To inflate the value of his
portfolio, Trump had to do nothing other than look away as the dirty money
poured in from one LLC to the next. Citizens in Russia, Kazakhstan, and other
former Soviet states lost hundreds of millions, but Trump got a cut as looted
funds flowed through offices and apartments in buildings that carried those
critical gold letters.
Horton’s evaluation of this material in coordination with the declassified DNI
report [10] is that Trump actively worked with and for Russian interests.
What these exposes showed, is that Trump pursued the projects hand in glove
with Russian mobsters who worked closely with Putin’s Kremlin ...
But based on the information in the Financial Times report, it appears that
there are actually two possible answers. Trump may have been actively involved
with and working for Russian sources. He might also have simply played the role
of useful idiot, displaying his readiness to feign ignorance about any deal …
so long as it generated some funds to float his sinking boat.
In the end, there’s not a lot of difference in the outcome. Trump got money.
Oligarchs cleaned their cash. Russia got their man.
Mark Sumner is the author of the nonfiction work "The Evolution of Everything"
as well as several novels including "Devil's Tower."
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Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/mark-sumner-1
[2] http://www.dailykos.com/
[3]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/heres-what-we-know-about-donald-trump-and-his-ties-to-russia/2016/07/29/1268b5ec-54e7-11e6-88eb-7dda4e2f2aec_story.html
[4] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Scott_Horton
[5] https://www.ft.com/
[6] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1vHUNPXUAEKZWP.jpg
[7] https://www.ft.com/content/ea52a678-9cfb-11e6-8324-be63473ce146
[8] https://www.ft.com/content/33285dfa-9231-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a923
[9] https://www.ft.com/content/549ddfaa-5fa5-11e6-b38c-7b39cbb1138a
[10]
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/7/1617993/-Declassified-Russian-campaign-to-undermine-faith-in-democratic-process-harm-Hillary-Clinton
[11] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Donald Trump Was Bailed ;
Out of Bankruptcy by Russia Crime Bosses
[12] http://www.alternet.org/
[13] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Donald Trump Was Bailed Out of Bankruptcy by Russia Crime Bosses
Donald Trump Was Bailed Out of Bankruptcy by Russia Crime Bosses
By Mark Sumner [1] / Daily Kos [2]
January 10, 2017
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In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. attended a real estate conference, where he stated
that [3]
Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our
assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.
As it turns out, that may have been an understatement. Human rights lawyer
Scott Horton [4], whose work in the region goes back to defending Andrei
Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents, has gone through a series of studies by
the Financial Times [5] to show how funds from Russian crime lords bailed Trump
out after yet anther bankruptcy. The conclusions are stark. [6]
Among the powerful facts that DNI missed were a series of very deep studies
published in the [Financial Times] that examined the structure and history of
several major Trump real estate projects from the last decade—the period after
his seventh bankruptcy and the cancellation of all his bank lines of credit. ...
The money to build these projects flowed almost entirely from Russian sources.
In other words, after his business crashed, Trump was floated and made to
appear to operate a successful business enterprise through the infusion of
hundreds in millions of cash from dark Russian sources.
He was their man.
Yes, even that much seems fantastic, and the details include business agencies
acting as a front for the GRU, billionaire mobsters, a vast network of
propaganda sources, and an American candidate completely under the thumb of the
Kremlin.
It reads like the a B-grade spy novel, a plot both too convoluted—and too
bluntly obvious—for John le Carré. The problem is it may not be a conspiracy
theory. It may be a conspiracy.
Horton’s analysis comes from piecing together information in three Financial
Times “deep reports.” One of these focused on Sergei Millian [7], the head of
the Russian American Chamber of Commerce in the US at the time of Trump Jr.’s
“money pouring in from Russia” claim.
Mr Millian insists his Russian American Chamber of Commerce (RACC) has nothing
to do with the Russian government. He says it is funded by payments from its
commercial members alone.
Most of the board members are obscure entities and nearly half of their
telephone numbers went unanswered when called by the Financial Times. An FT
reporter found no trace of the Chamber of Commerce at the Wall Street address
listed on its website.
Why was RACC’s background filled with so many holes? The Financial Times quotes
former Russian MP Konstantin Borovoi in tagging the chamber as a front for
intelligence operations that dates back to Soviet times.
“The chamber of commerce institutions are the visible part of the agent network
. . . Russia has spent huge amounts of money on this.”
Millian helped arrange for Trump to visit Moscow in 2007, and had other outings
with Trump in the states, including a visit to horse races in Miami. Millian
claims that he had the right to market Trump properties in Russia.
“You could say I was their exclusive broker,” he told Ria. “Then, in 2007-2008,
dozens of Russians bought apartments in Trump properties in the US.” He later
told ABC television that the Trump Organisation had received “hundreds of
millions of dollars” through deals with Russian businessmen.
Despite documents and photos showing Trump with Millian, Trump denied their
association during the campaign.
Hope Hicks, Mr Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, said Mr Trump had “met and spoke”
with Mr Millian only “on one occasion almost a decade ago at a hotel opening”.
The second Financial Times article [8] puts Trump at the middle of a money
laundering scheme, in which his real estate deals were used to hide not just an
infusion of capital from Russia and former Soviet states, but to launder
hundreds of millions looted by oligarchs. All Trump had to do was close his
eyes to the source of the money, and suddenly empty apartments were going for
top dollar.
Among the dozens of companies the Almaty lawyers say the Khrapunov laundering
network used were three called Soho 3310, Soho 3311 and Soho 3203. Each was a
limited liability company, meaning their ownership could easily be concealed.
The companies were created in April 2013 in New York. A week later, property
records show, they paid a total of $3.1m to buy the apartments that
corresponded with their names in the Trump Soho, a 46-storey luxury
hotel-condominium completed in 2010 in a chic corner of Manhattan.
Why would Trump’s organization make such a good means of laundering funds?
Because real estate has an arbitrary value. Is that apartment worth $1 million?
Two million? Why not $3 million for a buyer who really wants it? When the whole
transaction is just one LLC with undisclosed ownership paying another LLC with
undisclosed ownership, it’s even neater than hiding the money in an offshore
account. And while some businesses require due diligence in looking at the
source of funds, real estate is a bit more … flexible.
The laws regulating US real estate deals are scant, experts say. Provisions
against terrorism financing in the Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of the
September 11 2001 attacks, obliged mortgage lenders to conduct “know your
customer” research. But money launderers pay in cash. Sales such as those of
the Trump Soho apartments have passed through this loophole, which was
partially closed only this year.
Converting funds stolen overseas into property in the US and cash in the
account of an LLC represented a win for both the oligarchs and Trump. Best of
all, Trump’s sole requirement was that he pay scant attention to the
deal—something at which he was already a proven master. For example, the actual
owners of the Trump Soho were another limited liability company, Bayrock. Trump
was a partner in the LLC and Bayrock cut the checks Trump received when those
apartments were sold. And yet ...
In a 2011 deposition, given in a dispute over the Fort Lauderdale project, Mr
Trump said he had “never really understood who owned Bayrock”. Jody Kriss, a
former Bayrock finance director, has claimed in racketeering lawsuits against
his former employer that Bayrock’s backers included “hidden interests in Russia
and Kazakhstan”. Bayrock has denied Mr Kriss’s allegations but declined to
answer questions about the source of its funds and its relationship with the
Khrapunovs.
The third article [9]digs more deeply into the origins of Bayrock and its
connection with Trump. That connection … was very close.
The Republican presidential nominee and Bayrock were both based in Trump Tower
and they joined forces to pursue deals around the world — from New York,
Florida, Arizona and Colorado in the US to Turkey, Poland, Russia and Ukraine.
Their best-known collaboration — Trump SoHo, a 46-storey hotel-condominium
completed in 2010 — was featured in Mr Trump’s NBC television show The
Apprentice.
This is the same group about which Trump said he “never really understood” the
ownership.
“I don’t know who owns Bayrock,” Mr Trump said. “I never really understood who
owned Bayrock. I know they’re a developer that’s done quite a bit of work. But
I don’t know how they have their ownership broken down.”
At the very least, Trump confessed to partnering with, taking money from, and
acting as a representative for a corporation whose ownership he didn’t know, in
deals that totaled hundreds of millions in countries around the world. However,
it seems far more likely that Trump knowingly worked with oligarchs, groups
associated with the Russian government, and plain old mobsters. Why? Because he
was desperate.
By the 2000s, the property developer and casino owner with ready access to the
capital markets and the biggest New York banks was no more. A series of
corporate bankruptcies had limited his financing options. Mr Trump had become
an entertainer who portrayed a tycoon on television and licensed his name to
businesses looking for a brand, leading to fee-making opportunities as
disparate as Trump University and Trump Vodka.
The Trump Organization was a hollow shell and Trump was bankrupt, but Donald
Trump the public figure was a “successful businessman,” a screen behind which
criminal activity could be carried out on a massive scale. Throwing his name at
every scheme in existence wasn’t a strategy, it was a fire sale on Trump’s
respectability. Steaks? Water? Vodka? Fake real estate school? You pony up the
cash, and Trump will slap his name on it. Because by the early 2000s, Trump
wasn’t just broke, he had nothing left to pawn. He wasn’t a successful
businessman, but he still played one on TV. His image had more value than his
real estate portfolio.
But the apartments and buildings where Trump held some degree of ownership
could be turned into value again. All it took was partnering with foreign crime
bosses looking for a place to stash their cash. To inflate the value of his
portfolio, Trump had to do nothing other than look away as the dirty money
poured in from one LLC to the next. Citizens in Russia, Kazakhstan, and other
former Soviet states lost hundreds of millions, but Trump got a cut as looted
funds flowed through offices and apartments in buildings that carried those
critical gold letters.
Horton’s evaluation of this material in coordination with the declassified DNI
report [10] is that Trump actively worked with and for Russian interests.
What these exposes showed, is that Trump pursued the projects hand in glove
with Russian mobsters who worked closely with Putin’s Kremlin ...
But based on the information in the Financial Times report, it appears that
there are actually two possible answers. Trump may have been actively involved
with and working for Russian sources. He might also have simply played the role
of useful idiot, displaying his readiness to feign ignorance about any deal …
so long as it generated some funds to float his sinking boat.
In the end, there’s not a lot of difference in the outcome. Trump got money.
Oligarchs cleaned their cash. Russia got their man.
Mark Sumner is the author of the nonfiction work "The Evolution of Everything"
as well as several novels including "Devil's Tower."
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [11]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[12]
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/donald-trump-was-bailed-out-bankruptcy-russia-crime-bosses
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/mark-sumner-1
[2] http://www.dailykos.com/
[3]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/heres-what-we-know-about-donald-trump-and-his-ties-to-russia/2016/07/29/1268b5ec-54e7-11e6-88eb-7dda4e2f2aec_story.html
[4] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Scott_Horton
[5] https://www.ft.com/
[6] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1vHUNPXUAEKZWP.jpg
[7] https://www.ft.com/content/ea52a678-9cfb-11e6-8324-be63473ce146
[8] https://www.ft.com/content/33285dfa-9231-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a923
[9] https://www.ft.com/content/549ddfaa-5fa5-11e6-b38c-7b39cbb1138a
[10]
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/7/1617993/-Declassified-Russian-campaign-to-undermine-faith-in-democratic-process-harm-Hillary-Clinton
[11] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Donald Trump Was Bailed ;
Out of Bankruptcy by Russia Crime Bosses
[12] http://www.alternet.org/
[13] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
