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Trump owes them. A lot. … A LOT, a lot.
With all that “little help he got from his friends” — his Russian Oligarch friends — over the years.
Report: Russian mob money helped build Trump business empire
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, msnbc.com — 7/17/2017 [from 1 year ago.]
A stunning report in The New Republic alleges that, whether Donald Trump knew it or not, for decades he made a large portion of his personal fortune from Russian mobsters & oligarchs. Duration: 4:40
Drugs, Gambling Racketeering … That can’t be good.
Here is the core of it. [personally transcribed this from the Video Clip, above.]
[...]
UNGER: Well I think in the early days it was simply a matter of Money Laundering. The Russian Mafia got their money laundered, and Trump sold a lot of Condos -- and presumably didn't ask questions.
But things changed dramatically around 2002, and at the time Trump was still reeling from his massive expansion in Atlantic City. He had ending up with owing $4 billion to 70 banks. I mean, those are not the kind of thing you want on your resume, if you're going to be running for president of the United States.
And in 2002 a company called Bayrock moved into Trump Tower. It's a real estate company, and it too allegedly had ties to the Russian Mafia -- and they made Donald Trump 'an offer he could not refuse'. They were going to put up about a Billion dollars in financing. Trump put up Zero -- and yet he got 18% of the profits on their joint ventures.
[...]
More please ...
Trump owes them. He owes them a Lot.
Researcher Unger states that he pulled together this startling Trump-Russian history lesson, from information "based on public records." It documents the long history of the Trump’s business ties with “shady” Russian characters, over the years.
How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.
by Craig Unger, NewRepublic.com -- July 13, 2017
[...] A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower — in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.
It’s entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters, with his casinos and condos providing easy pass-throughs for their illicit riches. At the very least, with his constant need for new infusions of cash and his well-documented troubles with creditors, Trump made an easy “mark” for anyone looking to launder money. But whatever his knowledge about the source of his wealth, the public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians — including the dirtiest and most feared of them all.
[...]
[Felix] Sapir also introduced Trump to Tevfik Arif, his partner in the Trump SoHo deal. [...] In 2002, after meeting Trump, he [Arif] moved Bayrock’s offices to Trump Tower, where he and his staff of Russian émigrés set up shop on the twenty-fourth floor.
Trump worked closely with Bayrock on real estate ventures in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. “Bayrock knew the investors,” he later testified. Arif “brought the people up from Moscow to meet with me.” He boasted about the deal he was getting: Arif was offering him a 20 to 25 percent cut on his overseas projects, he said, not to mention management fees. “It was almost like mass production of a car,” Trump testified.
[...]
In Trump-world — It PAYS to have friends in “Low Places” …
Jared Kushner sealed real estate deal with oligarch's firm cited in money-laundering case
by Wendy Dent and Ed Pilkington in New York and Shaun Walker in Moscow
theGuardian.com — 24 July 2017 [from 1 year ago.]
[...]
A Guardian investigation has established a series of overlapping ties and relationships involving alleged Russian money laundering, New York real estate deals and members of Trump’s inner circle. They include a 2015 sale of part of the old New York Times building in Manhattan involving Kushner and a billionaire real estate tycoon and diamond mogul, Lev Leviev.
[...]
[Lev] Leviev, a global tycoon known as the “king of diamonds”, was a business partner of the Russian-owned company Prevezon Holdings that was at the center of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit launched in New York. Under the leadership of US attorney Preet Bharara, who was fired by Trump in March, prosecutors pursued Prevezon for allegedly attempting to use Manhattan real estate deals to launder money stolen from the Russian treasury.
The scam had been uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant who died in 2009 in a Moscow jail in suspicious circumstances. US sanctions against Russia imposed after Magnitsky’s death were a central topic of conversation at the notorious Trump Tower meeting last June between Kushner, Donald Trump Jr, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin.
[...]
[emphasis added]
Remember Preet Bharara, the US Attorney from the Obama Administration, who was “personally guaranteed” by The Donald, he could keep his NY prosecutor job.
Until this landed on the Trump To-Do List:
A $230 million Tax Fraud case against a Russian holding company, initially brought by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
Adios Preet, Ola Joon Kim.
Trump’s “acting” replacement for Preet — Joon Kim, just let the Russian mobsters defendants “walk” instead face the harsh light of national-spotlight day:
by Jef Feeley and Bob Van Voris, bloomberg.com — May 12, 2017 [from 1 year ago.]
The U.S. agreed to take $5.9 million to settle a money-laundering lawsuit tied to a $230 million Russian tax fraud, avoiding a trial that was set to begin Monday.
Both the U.S. and a Cyprus-based company controlled by a Russian businessman claimed victory in avoiding a trial that promised to shed light on an intricate web of shell companies and middlemen that were allegedly used to spirit dirty money out of Russia in violation of international financial regulations.
[...]
"This settlement is nothing short of a victory for Prevezon [Holdings Ltd.]," Faith Gay, a lawyer for the company, said in a phone interview. "It’s almost an apology by the government."
[...]
Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces $5.9 Million Settlement Of Civil Money Laundering And Forfeiture Claims Against Real Estate Corporations Alleged To Have Laundered Proceeds Of Russian Tax Fraud
Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that the United States has settled a money laundering and civil forfeiture action against assets of 11 corporations, including some that own luxury residential and high-end commercial real estate in Manhattan. The Government’s complaint alleged that the defendant corporations laundered some proceeds of a $230 million Russian tax refund fraud scheme involving corrupt Russian officials that was uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in pretrial detention in Moscow under suspicious circumstances and was posthumously prosecuted by Russia.
In the stipulation of settlement filed with U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III today, which is still subject to approval by the Court, one of the defendant corporations, Prevezon Holdings Ltd., agrees to pay $5,896,333.65 to resolve the Government’s claims against all defendants. This payment represents triple the value of the proceeds that the Government alleged could be traced directly from the Russian treasury fraud to the defendants ($1,965,444.55), and more than ten times the amount of proceeds the Government alleged could be traced directly to property in New York (approximately $582,000).
Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said: “We will not allow the U.S. financial system to be used to launder the proceeds of crimes committed anywhere — here in the U.S., in Russia, or anywhere else. Under the terms of this settlement, the defendants have agreed to pay not just what we alleged flowed to them from the Russian treasury fraud, but three times that amount, and roughly 10 times the money we alleged could be traced directly into U.S. accounts and real estate.”
The Government’s lawsuit alleged as follows:
In 2007, a Russian criminal organization engaged in an elaborate tax refund fraud scheme resulting in a fraudulently obtained tax refund of approximately $230 million from the Russian treasury. As part of the fraud scheme, members of the organization stole the corporate identities of portfolio companies of the Hermitage Fund, a foreign investment fund operating in Russia. The organization’s members then used these stolen identities to make fraudulent claims for tax refunds.
[...]
After perpetrating this fraud, members of the organization undertook illegal actions in order to conceal this fraud and retaliate against individuals who attempted to expose it. After learning of the lawsuits against its portfolio companies, Hermitage retained attorneys, including Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, to investigate. Magnitsky and other attorneys for Hermitage uncovered the refund fraud scheme, and the complicity of Russian governmental officials in it, and were subject to retaliatory criminal proceedings against them. Magnitsky was arrested and died approximately a year later in pretrial detention. An independent Russian human rights council concluded that Magnitsky’s arrest and detention were illegal, that Magnitsky was denied necessary medical care in custody, that he was beaten by eight guards with rubber batons on the last day of his life, and that the ambulance crew that was called to treat him as he was dying was deliberately kept outside of his cell for more than an hour until he was dead.
A $6 Million dollar Fine on a $230 Million dollar Theft — Not a bad “Take” for Oligarch-Mobsters laundering money in New York City, eh?
In Putin-world, sometime it PAYS to have crooked Puppets in High Places … Right Vlad?
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Hmmm? $230 Million dollars, such a “round number” — where have I heard that number before?
Any Buellers in the audience, connecting the same coincidental dots, as me?
Bueller? … Bueller? … Bueller?
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PS.
In May 2015, Kushner’s company paid $295 million for a majority share in the former New York Times Building in a deal with Lev Leviev, an Uzbek-Israeli diamond tycoon who serves as chairman of one of Russia’s largest real estate firms and is a self-professed “true friend” of Vladimir Putin.
by Khatya Chhor, france24.com — 2017-02-17
[from 1 year and a half ago.]
Trump and Russian money GO WAY Back ...
Lest anyone forget.
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