American Nero by Richard Painter

Author:Richard Painter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781950665273
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Published: 2020-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

BUSINESS DEALS WITH THE RUSSIANS

Trump has suspicious financial relationships with oligarchs aligned with Vladimir Putin.

In addition to the mysterious financial arrangements we pointed our earlier, Trump apparently owes as much as $560 million to the Blackstone/Bayrock group, which is owned by Russian billionaires, many of whom owe their position and wealth to Putin. Men who have borrowed from Bayrock claim that owing money to them is like owing to the Russian mob; they ask for favors.

Bayrock, founded by Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet-era commerce official originally from Kazakhstan, partnered with Trump on a series of real estate deals between 2002 and 2011, the most prominent being the troubled Trump SoHo hotel and condominium in Manhattan. Trump lent his name to a number of Bayrock projects for large fees. In return, Bayrock took money from foreign investors—apparently including money launderers—for projects in Iceland, Belgium, France, and England. Trump testified in 2017 that he met Bayrock officials in Trump Tower to discuss deals in Moscow.

“It’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t be investing in Russia,” Trump said in that deposition. “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.”

One of Bayrock’s principals, Felix Sater, was implicated in a stock-manipulation scheme involving Mafia figures and Russian criminals inflating stock prices on Wall Street. Around 2001 Sater joined Bayrock. Sater proposed erecting building complexes with Trump’s name. They apparently discussed buildings in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Ukraine, and China.

In 2005 Trump and Bayrock joined to develop a project in Moscow. Sater said he had Russian investors and a site for a luxury high-rise—a shuttered pencil factory named for American radicals Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

“I showed [Trump] photos, I showed him the site, showed him the view from the site,” said Sater. “It’s pretty spectacular.”

Sater handled all the negotiations, but the deal fell through.

Another Bayrock principal was Salvatore Lauria, who brokered a $50 million investment in Trump SoHo and three other Bayrock projects by an Icelandic firm. According to a lawsuit against Bayrock by Jody Kriss, a former executive, the firm was funded by wealthy Russians close to President Vladimir Putin. Another Bayrock investor was Alexander Mashkevich, a Russian billionaire once charged in a corruption case in Belgium.

Kriss accused Bayrock of being a front for money laundering. In the lawsuit he said that Bayrock occasionally received unexplained infusions of cash from accounts in Kazakhstan and Russia. In addition to laundering money, Kriss said Bayrock executives skimmed cash, dodged taxes, and cheated him out of millions of dollars.

After Sater left Bayrock, he was given office space in Trump Tower and Trump Organization cards that identified him as a “senior advisor to Donald Trump.”

In November 2013 Trump in a deposition denied knowing both Arif and Sater.

When asked about Arif, he said, “I mean, I’ve seen him a couple of times. I have met him.” As for Sater, he said, “If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like.”

An unlikely story.

There was also the Trump Tower Moscow project that, although never consummated, Trump contemplated as late as 2015.

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