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The House Intelligence Committee decided to follow the lead of their Senate counter part, and release the transcripts of their interview with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. From pages 39-41 of the transcript, we learn that huge sums of ‘untrackable’ money were poured in the Trump Golf Courses in Ireland and Scotland. Ventures that financially have been ‘sinkholes’ — luxury extravagances without an audience or market.
MR. SCHIFF: And during what time period did you see indications of fast turnover transactions or transactions made in the name of people who were not the actual purchasers?
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MR. SIMPSON: Well, I mean, some of the things that we have — that we looked at that we thought were very concerning are existing investments in projects, and specifically a project in Panama, the one in Toronto. Those both got a lot of fraud associated with them, a lot of fraud allegations, a lot of activity that I would say smacks of fraud, and a lot of Russian mafia figures listed as buyers who may or may not have actually put money into it.
And so there's a couple of — so a couple of the big condo tower deals offshore, outside the United States, I think both of those are in bankruptcy now, Mr. Trump is no longer associated with them.
The other one that is — was concerning to us was — is the golf courses in Scotland and Ireland.
MR. SCHIFF: And did you see Russian money involved with those as well?
MR. SIMPSON: Well, we had -- you know, we saw what Eric Trump said about Russian money being available for his golf — for the golf course projects, making remarks about having unlimited sums available. And, you know, because Mr. Trump's companies are generally not publicly traded and don't do a lot of public disclosure, we can only look — have a limited look into the financing of those projects.
But because the Irish courses and the Scottish courses are under U.K., you know, Anglo corporate law, they have — they file financial statements.
So we were able to get the financial statements. And they don't, on their face, show Russian involvement, but what they do show is enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources and — or at least on paper it says it's from The Trump Organization, but it's hundreds of millions of dollars. And these golf course are just, you know, they're sinks. They don't actually make any money.
So, you know, if you're familiar with Donald. Trump's finances and the litigation over whether he's really a billionaire, you know, there's good reason to believe he doesn't have enough money to do this and that he would have had to have outside financial support for these things.
Again, you know, because of what I do, it's sort of in this middle area where we mostly are working off public records. A lot of what I do is analyze whether things make sense and whether they can be explained. And that didn't make sense to me, doesn't make sense to me to this day.
Fusion GPS is not the only one, noticing the the “inverted” business model of Trump Deals going on in the U.K. Hmmm, regulators should take notice, too.
Donald Trump's Golf Courses in Scotland Are Losing a Ton of Money
by Geoffrey Smith, fortune.com — Oct 9, 2017
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Turnberry, which has hosted the British Open four times, more than doubled its losses as it was forced to close its historic Ailsa course for half of the year while the Trump Organization carried out refurbishment work. (As president, Trump has since distanced himself from the organization that carries his name.) Trump had bought the august old club an hour’s drive down the west coast from Glasgow in 2014, intending to remodel the club’s facilities in his signature style. According to Bloomberg, Trump Turnberry lost 17.6 million pounds ($23 million) on only 9 million pounds of revenue (down from 11 million the previous year).
Trump’s other course near Aberdeen in north-east Scotland, which has been the cause of a spectacular argument between him and the Scottish government over offshore wind turbines that Trump says spoil the view, saw its loss widen by 28% to 1.4 million pounds on a 12% drop in revenue. The Aberdeen course was hit by the fact that the regional economy depends largely on the oil and gas industry, which announced thousands of job cuts last year after oil prices fell by over 50% at the end of 2015.
The President has now sunk some 152 million pounds into the two courses (most of it at Turnberry), but it’s far from clear whether either course will make that money back. The outlook for the Aberdeen energy industry is as tough as ever, and the business case for Turnberry depends on turning it into a “leading destination for weddings, conferences and events” alongside golf. While that strategy has been the salvation of many U.S. golf clubs over the last few years, it’s unclear whether it can be replicated in Scotland, especially given the mixed emotions that the president inspires locally.
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by Severin Carrell Scotland editor, TheGuardian.com — 8 Oct 2017
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Trump’s much larger and better known golfing resort and hotel at Turnberry in Ayrshire, which he bought in 2014, has also suffered heavy losses, largely because of its partial closure for refurbishment and building works.
Trump increased his funding of the resort by £49m last year. In all, Trump Turnberry owes Trump £112m ($146m), the accounts for its parent company Golf Recreation Scotland show, nearly double the £63m it owed him the previous year. In all, his interest-free loans to both resorts reached £153m ($200m) by the end of last year.
His son Eric Trump, who was given operational control of the smaller resort north of Aberdeen just before his father became president in January, said 2016 had been a difficult year, and hinted that those financial troubles were continuing.
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“Difficult Years” indeed, especially considering, that they have no doubt, loss their “major source” of Funding, for these boon-doggle projects … (given the lack of Sanctions Lifting, delivered by Trump & Co.)
As shown in the opening Transcript quote, Mr Simpson gives credence to Eric Trump’s claims “having unlimited sums available” from Russia.
Simpson goes on to summarize this recurring Trump theme, and perennial quandary (on page 51), quite succinctly, as so:
“… you know, someone who says they're a billionaire but can't get a bank loan, you know, there's this whole issue of where is the credit coming from.”
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Having piqued Representative Schiff’s curiosity, he goes on to ask Simpson for more info on Trump’s historic “Mafia connections”, from page 41:
MR. SCHIFF: [...] If the Russians were laundering money through Trump golf courses or Trump condos, would the Russian Government be aware of this? Would they be either knowing or active participants potentially in this?
MR. SIMPSON: Well, so what is well known and well established in criminology now is that the Russian mafia is essentially under the dominion of the Russian Government and Russian Intelligence Services. And many of the oligarchs are also mafia figures.
And the oligarchs, during this period of consolidation of power by Vladimir Putin, when I was living in Brussels and doing all this work, was about him essentially taking control over both the oligarchs and the mafia groups.
And so basically everyone in Russia works for Putin now. And that's true of the diaspora as well. So the Russian mafia in the United States is believed by law enforcement criminologists to have — to be under the influence of the Russian security services. And this is convenient for the security services because it gives them a level of deniability.
Given the “level of deniability”, routinely exhibited by the Republican “rank and file” toward the overwhelming amount Trump-Russia evidence — one has to wonder if, they too are employed “under the influence of the Russian security services”?