Stunning Report helps explain Trump's 'Indebtedness' to Russia
Report: Russian mob money helped build Trump business empire
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, msnbc.com — 7/17/17
Watch video here
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/12/1688914/-Stunning-Report-helps-explain-Trump-s-Indebtedness-to-Russia
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.
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WILLIAMS: Is there a Quid vs a Pro Quo? I mean with Trump having been accused of being so 'transactional' -- is there a long ... umm Debt -- this reason to bend over backwards, to show Russia and Putin the benefit of the doubt? What's the active extortion, compromise-threat that you allege that you've found?
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.
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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.
Here are a few snippets, with some editorial emphasis added, for special effect:
Trump’s Russian Laundromat
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.
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[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.
But Bayrock and its deals quickly became mired in controversy. Forbes and other publications reported that the company was financed by a notoriously corrupt group of oligarchs known as The Trio. In 2010, Arif was arrested by Turkish prosecutors and charged with setting up a prostitution ring after he was found aboard a boat — chartered by one of The Trio — with nine young women, two of whom were 16 years old. The women reportedly refused to talk, and Arif was acquitted. According to a lawsuit filed that same year by two former Bayrock executives, Arif started the firm “backed by oligarchs and money they stole from the Russian people.” In addition, the suit alleges, Bayrock “was substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated.” The company’s real purpose, the executives claim, was to develop hugely expensive properties bearing the Trump brand — and then use the projects to launder money and evade taxes.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/12/1688914/-Stunning-Report-helps-explain-Trump-s-Indebtedness-to-Russia
