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Oh if there were really such as thing — as “the dustbin of history” — with the bankrupted businessman Donald Trump, ‘swept up into it’.
Thanks to Wilbur Ross, Donald Trump kept on, keeping on with the ‘false facade’ of Success — even though his bondholders, knew the real story ...
by Chase Purdy, QZ.com — Nov 08, 2017
Wilbur Ross is one of the key people Donald Trump has relied upon to reach the White House. That’s because nearly three decades ago, Ross intervened to save one of Trump’s failing businesses — and in doing so helped recast the real-estate mogul into a full-fledged brand name.
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The casino mess that preserved Trump’s name
Trump and Ross are inextricably connected — perhaps more than anyone else in the Trump cabinet. Without Ross, Trump might never have been in a position to run for president. That’s because Trump’s appeal to voters rested mightily on his ability to pitch himself first and foremost as a successful businessman.
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“We could have foreclosed [on the Trump Taj Mahal], and he would have been gone,” Ross told the paper last year. Trump was allowed to keep a 25-percent share of the Taj. The bondholders took half. And as the Post reported, “To outsiders it seemed Trump was still running the casino.”
Ross received further credit from Trump biographer David Cay Johnston, who told the BBC: “Wilbur Ross was a key negotiator in Donald Trump not having to go through bankruptcy and not being swept into the dustbin of history because he saw the value in the Trump name.”
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Sometimes it’s the “quiet ones” you have to watch out for.
Usually, they are the ones that know — it is better to cover your tracks, than to advertise them.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross benefits from business ties to Putin’s inner circle
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists — Paradise Papers — Nov 17, 2017
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. has a stake in a shipping firm that receives millions of dollars a year in revenue from a company whose key owners include Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law and a Russian tycoon sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as a member of Putin’s inner circle.
Ross, a billionaire private equity investor, divested most of his business assets before joining President Donald Trump’s Cabinet in February, but he kept a stake in the shipping firm, Navigator Holdings Ltd., which is incorporated in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. Offshore entities in which Ross and other investors hold a financial stake controlled 31.5 percent of the company in 2016, according to Navigator’s latest annual report.
Among Navigator’s largest customers, contributing more than $68 million in revenue since 2014, is the Moscow-based gas and petrochemicals company Sibur. Two of its key owners are Kirill Shamalov, who is married to Putin’s youngest daughter, and Gennady Timchenko, the sanctioned oligarch whose activities in the energy sector, the Treasury Department said, were “directly linked to Putin.”
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There are reasons why corrupt millionaires use “shell companies” — they are hard to follow, hard to detect, and hard to tax.
Just check out how Wilbur Ross used his obscure “shell companies” — to try to prevent Congress from discovering his on-going income streams, from his Putin-connected holdings.
'Paradise Papers' reveal Trump commerce secretary Wilbur Ross' Russia ties
by Sonam Sheth and Associated Press; BusinessInsider.com — Nov 5, 2017
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‘Fake Transparency’
The document dump indicates that Ross was not entirely forthcoming about his financial dealings during his confirmation process in January.
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However, as NBC News reported on Sunday, although Ross divested most of his holdings, he was not entirely transparent about the financial interests he continued to maintain.
In the letter, per NBC News, Ross created two separate lists: one that included the interests he planned to divest, and another that included those he planned to keep. Four out of the nine entities included on the second list were companies based in the Cayman Islands represented by Appleby, the Bermuda-based law firm where most of the "Paradise Papers" were originally housed.
The four Cayman Island companies are linked to two other financial entities: WLR Recovery Fund IV DSS AIV L.P., and WLR Recovery Fund V DSS AIV L.P. Both entities were listed in Ross' financial disclosure form prior to his confirmation, but he did not say that he would retain his interests in them. Those two entities, in turn, control nearly a 33% stake in Navigator Holdings.
So how did this “quiet one” get hooked up with Putin’s inner circle?
Well when your controlling the egress and ingress of Billions in Sanctioned Funds, you’re bound to be the thrown “a few perks” now and again. In exchange for your discretion.
Trump's commerce secretary oversaw Russia deal while at Bank of Cyprus
Questions raised over Trump appointee Wilbur Ross and his ties to politically connected Russian oligarchs
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner, theguardian.com — 23 Mar 2017
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In 2015, while he served as vice-chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, the bank’s Russia-based businesses were sold to a Russian banker and consultant, Artem Avetisyan, who had ties to both the Russian president and Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. At the time, Sberbank was under US and EU sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Avetisyan had earlier been selected by Putin to head a new business branch of the Russian president’s strategic initiative agency, which was tasked with improving business and government ties.
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Ross, who had made billions of dollars years earlier by betting on bankrupt steel mills, was known for taking risky bets. But his decision to inject €400m into the bank with other investors encompassed a different kind of risk. It put him at the centre of the biggest financial institution in a country that was widely considered to be a tax haven for Russian oligarchs, even as the US and EU were imposing sanctions on Russia. In 2014, the year he made his investment, the US State Department considered Cyprus an area of “primary concern” for money laundering (pdf), according to its official assessment.
Ross was appointed vice-chairman at the bank after his investment in 2014, a post he shared with a deposit holder-turned-shareholder, Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, referred to in Russian media as a former KGB official and Putin ally. According to the bank’s annual reports, the two attended two board meetings together in 2014 and as many as five together in 2015 before Strzhalkovsky’s May 2015 resignation from the board. One of the questions that has been posed to Ross by Democratic senators is whether he ever had contact with Strzhalkovsky.
One of Ross’s first big decisions at the bank was the appointment of former Deutsche Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann as chairman, whom he chose in part because of Ackermann’s “huge Rolodex”, according to a 2014 Bloomberg interview.
It’s truly amazing that Wilbur Ross was ever confirmed by this “see nothing, know nothing” GOP-led Congress.
Then again you can say that about most of Trump’s Cabinet picks.
Massive Leak Reveals New Ties Between Trump Administration and Russia, Implicating Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Jared Kushner
The so-called Paradise Papers have revealed secrets of politicians worldwide, including new links between the Trump administration and Russia.
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“In concealing his interest in these shipping companies — and his ongoing financial relationship with Russian oligarchs — Secretary Ross misled me, the Senate Commerce Committee, and the American people,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in a statement on Sunday. He characterized Ross’ financial disclosures as a “Russian nesting doll, with blatant conflicts of interest carefully hidden within seemingly innocuous companies.”
Ross has been linked to Russian interests before; in 2014, he poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Bank of Cyprus, an institution regarded by financial watchdogs as a haven for Russian money laundering. Ross' fellow investors included a pair of Russian oligarchs, including Dmitry Rybolovlev, the man who bought a Trump property in Palm Beach for $95 million, even though it was valued at less than $60 million. Ross became a vice chair of the bank, along with a reported former KGB officer. Former Deutsche Bank executive Josef Ackermann was installed as chairman. Deutsche Bank — one of Trump’s biggest creditors — subsequently paid hundreds of millions to settle disputes that it shipped $10 billion or more to Russia in suspect loans.
That was where the Bank of Cyprus slush funds from Russia, started co-mingling with the Trump “float me a loan” Russian road. Heck, Ross may have put the “Trump Brand”, on the Putin radar.
Money Launderers just need a willing conduit (ie. a Banker), and a willing, desperate former U.S. Billionaire, who is all about ‘keeping up appearances’ (ie. a Stooge).
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Deutsche Bank in January agreed to pay $628 million to UK and US regulators to settle probes into whether it helped covertly move as much as $10 billion out of Russia through a process known as "mirror trading."
Separately, the Guardian reported in February that Deutsche Bank had lent $300 million to Trump and had carried out an internal review of the loans following his election to see if there was any connection to Russia. The result of the probe has not been publicly disclosed.
The committee [House Committee on Financial Services] says in its letter:
"There is no transparency regarding who participated in, or benefited from, the Russian mirror trading scheme that allowed $10 billion to flow out of Russia. Likewise, Congress remains in the dark on whether loans Deutsche Bank made to President Trump were guaranteed by the Russian Government, or were in any way connected to Russia.
A Sober Prediction: Wilbur Ross will soon rue the day, he decided to bail-out Donald Trump from the “Dustbin of History” — when “he saw the value in the Trump name” — back in Trump’s Taj Mahal glory days.
— rue the “value” of endless notoriety, the likes of which he never bargained for, in his International high-roller dreams.