First, need to say I had been away on family issues for a while. Glad to be back here catching up and trolling the news for Trump alerts.
This news item came to me from a friend visiting Europe. It again shows how news media there is doing some amazing digging into very likely Trump ties to major illegal money laundering schemes. ZEMBLA is a well-respected current affairs program on VARA network. I believe that Trump’s involvement in such activity will be his downfall...he has been at it too long and now so many entities diving deep into it and connecting the dots.
In short, this article links Bayrock, Trump’s real estate development company, to the use of Dutch letter box companies in a scheme to launder money. ZEMBLA found that Bayrock siphoned off $1.5 million by setting up business in the Netherlands in 2007. Felix Sater is the key Trump partner involved in Bayrock, which is already facing large-scale tax fraud charges in New York. The attorney prosecuting that case told ZEMBLA:
This incriminating information could place Donald Trump in an extremely difficult position, claims attorney F. Oberlander, who is prosecuting Bayrock on behalf of the State of New York: “The maximum jail term would be 30 years. So you’re in really serious trouble.”
Now, my favorite part of this article is the response that ZEMBLA got from Bayrock. The company wanted to make it clear that the Dutch corporate construction was established on the advice of an external legal counsel. Now…. get ready…. that just happens to be the firm known as Bracewell & Giuliani. YES!!! Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and part owner of the law firm at the time, is now linked to this scheme.
The article, of course, notes the ever-present link to Russian money through Viktor Khrapunov, a fugitive ex-mayor and governor from Kazakhstan, accused of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from his country.
ZEMBLA has access to correspondence between the law firm and the Dutch director of a trust company in Amsterdam, which leaves no doubt as to the ultimate beneficiary owners of the Dutch business construction: the director of Bayrock and the Khrapunov family from Kazakhstan.
Read the full article at zembla.vara.nl/…
Note that at the bottom, they provide links to earlier articles on related topics.