Addy
Rebuild With Biden!
After reading this... it convinced me too... something is definitely going on.
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snip
“We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” says Debra Stotts, a sales agent who filled up the tower. The very top floors went unsold for years, but a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states, a Bloomberg investigation shows.
Then there's this ...
Sam Kislin, a Ukrainian immigrant, issued mortgages to buyers of multimillion-dollar apartments in World Tower. It’s highly unusual for individuals to issue formal mortgages for U.S. luxury real estate, and the tower loans are the only ones Kislin ever made in New York, public records show.
Almost two decades earlier, Kislin had sold Trump about 200 televisions on credit. “I gave him 30 days, and in exactly 30 days he paid me back,” says Kislin, now 82. “He never gave me any trouble.” He says the televisions were for the Commodore Hotel, which Trump had bought in 1976 with Hyatt Corp.
Later we learn that Kislin opened his electronics store with Tamir Sapir, an immigrant from Georgia who in a matter of years went from hardscrabble cabbie to oil baron and real estate magnate. He later went into business with Trump as, among other deals, a partner on the Trump Soho development project. Later we read this: "Investigated by the FBI in the 1990s for allegations including mob ties and laundering money from Russia, Kislin was never charged, and he maintains his innocence."
If you read the piece, the anecdotes follow a standard pattern. Fabulously wealthy immigrant or national from the former Soviet Union either sets up shop in a Trump property, purchases one or helps finance one. Eduard Nektalov, a diamond dealer from Uzbekistan, who bought on the 79th floor, is one example. They almost all seem to be under some kind of investigation for money laundering or mob ties. Usually they're never charged. Sometimes they're gunned down in mafia assassinations. As Trump himself might say, there's something going on.
Nektalov was, ironically, shot to death on 6th Avenue, less than a year after his purchase. He was reportedly cooperating with authorities at the time of his death.
There is only so much we can piece together without access to Trump's internal business records. As I've noted before, the great bulk of what we do know about these ventures comes from lawsuits when things went south. (Much of what we know about Trump Soho comes to us that way.) What does seem clear though is that what began as Trump being a go to place for Russian and former Soviet Union money wanting to buy up individual apartment units and luxury homes was shifting in the middle of the last decade to much larger investments to fund the building projects themselves.
Trump Soho is the emblematic example. As we've discussed, it's funded mainly with capital from the former Soviet Union, the origins of which were in some cases hard to figure out even to the people organizing the construction. We also see some of the same people who earlier show up around the unit purchases suddenly reappearing as major investors in the building projects themselves. In the case of Trump Soho, the project was a collaboration of Trump, Felix Sater's Bayrock and Tamir Sapir.
This is clearly what Donald Trump Jr was referring to in 2008 when he told a real estate conference that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The jagged progression of Russian political economy over the last quarter century combined with Trump's own near-death financial experiences in the 1990s came together to build an enduring partnership by the first years of the 21st century.
Many people look at this arc of growing dependency on money from the former Soviet Union and look for that moment when Trump becomes so dependent on money from Russia that he's forced to cut a deal with Vladimir Putin; or perhaps his business partners catch him in a compromising situation and then he's owned by nefarious forces in Russia. I do not rule out the possibility that some less lurid version of one of these scenarios did happen. But what many of us see as the smoke, which must somewhere lead to fire, is actually the story itself. The smoke is the story! Or to put it differently, the deep business ties provide a compelling explanation and I think likely sufficient explanation of Trump's persistent coziness and affection with top figures in Russia and Russian geopolitical interests.
read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/follow-the-money--4
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
snip
“We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” says Debra Stotts, a sales agent who filled up the tower. The very top floors went unsold for years, but a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states, a Bloomberg investigation shows.
Then there's this ...
Sam Kislin, a Ukrainian immigrant, issued mortgages to buyers of multimillion-dollar apartments in World Tower. It’s highly unusual for individuals to issue formal mortgages for U.S. luxury real estate, and the tower loans are the only ones Kislin ever made in New York, public records show.
Almost two decades earlier, Kislin had sold Trump about 200 televisions on credit. “I gave him 30 days, and in exactly 30 days he paid me back,” says Kislin, now 82. “He never gave me any trouble.” He says the televisions were for the Commodore Hotel, which Trump had bought in 1976 with Hyatt Corp.
Later we learn that Kislin opened his electronics store with Tamir Sapir, an immigrant from Georgia who in a matter of years went from hardscrabble cabbie to oil baron and real estate magnate. He later went into business with Trump as, among other deals, a partner on the Trump Soho development project. Later we read this: "Investigated by the FBI in the 1990s for allegations including mob ties and laundering money from Russia, Kislin was never charged, and he maintains his innocence."
If you read the piece, the anecdotes follow a standard pattern. Fabulously wealthy immigrant or national from the former Soviet Union either sets up shop in a Trump property, purchases one or helps finance one. Eduard Nektalov, a diamond dealer from Uzbekistan, who bought on the 79th floor, is one example. They almost all seem to be under some kind of investigation for money laundering or mob ties. Usually they're never charged. Sometimes they're gunned down in mafia assassinations. As Trump himself might say, there's something going on.
Nektalov was, ironically, shot to death on 6th Avenue, less than a year after his purchase. He was reportedly cooperating with authorities at the time of his death.
There is only so much we can piece together without access to Trump's internal business records. As I've noted before, the great bulk of what we do know about these ventures comes from lawsuits when things went south. (Much of what we know about Trump Soho comes to us that way.) What does seem clear though is that what began as Trump being a go to place for Russian and former Soviet Union money wanting to buy up individual apartment units and luxury homes was shifting in the middle of the last decade to much larger investments to fund the building projects themselves.
Trump Soho is the emblematic example. As we've discussed, it's funded mainly with capital from the former Soviet Union, the origins of which were in some cases hard to figure out even to the people organizing the construction. We also see some of the same people who earlier show up around the unit purchases suddenly reappearing as major investors in the building projects themselves. In the case of Trump Soho, the project was a collaboration of Trump, Felix Sater's Bayrock and Tamir Sapir.
This is clearly what Donald Trump Jr was referring to in 2008 when he told a real estate conference that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The jagged progression of Russian political economy over the last quarter century combined with Trump's own near-death financial experiences in the 1990s came together to build an enduring partnership by the first years of the 21st century.
Many people look at this arc of growing dependency on money from the former Soviet Union and look for that moment when Trump becomes so dependent on money from Russia that he's forced to cut a deal with Vladimir Putin; or perhaps his business partners catch him in a compromising situation and then he's owned by nefarious forces in Russia. I do not rule out the possibility that some less lurid version of one of these scenarios did happen. But what many of us see as the smoke, which must somewhere lead to fire, is actually the story itself. The smoke is the story! Or to put it differently, the deep business ties provide a compelling explanation and I think likely sufficient explanation of Trump's persistent coziness and affection with top figures in Russia and Russian geopolitical interests.
read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/follow-the-money--4
