Guardian - The Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower soars over Panama City bay, a 70-storey skyscraper shaped like a sail. Donald Trump’s first international hotel venture, it opened in 2011, a mix of condominiums, hotel rooms and a casino.
As one of the tallest structures in Latin America, it was a bold and lucrative expression of the Trump brand, earning him as much as $13.9m in management fees and royalties in the last three years.
By day it glints in the tropical sunshine, an apparently shining testament to the US president’s business savvy.
But a curious thing happens at night. Many of the lights stay off. The restaurants are near deserted; the corridors silent. The skyscraper appears to be largely empty – a dark tower.
Many of those who bought the condos, it turns out, did so not to live there but allegedly to launder illicit money – Russian gangster money, drug cartel money, people-smuggling money.
A joint Reuters-NBC News investigation published on Friday alongside a report by the non-profit Global Witness said the skyscraper with Trump’s name had ties to international organized crime.
Alternet - The property, which the lead broker Alexandre Ventura Nogueira describes as “Ivanka Trump’s baby,” listed units for three times the going rate in Panama City, thanks to the Trump name. Nogueira worked closely with the Trump family; he claims he attended at least 10 meetings with Ivanka Trump, who challenged him to sell 100 units in the building. “The agreement was, I had a week to sell 100 units,” Nogueira told Reuters. “I said, ‘I’m going to do better, I’m going to sell without telling (the buyers) the price.'”
Nogueira later fled Panama after he was arrested for unrelated charges of real estate fraud. From his European asylum, he told NBC that at least half of his Trump Ocean Club customers were Russians, including some with “questionable backgrounds." Only later did he learn of their ties to Russian organized crime circles.
NBC reports that Mauricio Ceballos, a former prosecutor in Panama who investigated Trump’s business associates for financial crimes, called the Trump Ocean Club “a vehicle for money laundering.”
Among the shady buyers are:
David Murcia Guzmán, founder of a large Colombian marketing company, who purchased 10 units in the Trump Ocean Club. Guzmán is now in U.S. custody, convicted of laundering money on behalf of drug cartels, and will be extradited to Colombia. Guzmán also has financial ties to the terrorist organization FARC. Louis Pargiolas, who pleaded guilty in 2009 in Miami to conspiracy to import cocaine. Stanislav Kavalenka, a Russian national charged in Canada for compelling women into prostitution. Arkady Vodovozov, convicted in Israel of kidnapping, according to Reuters.
By 2010, Donald Trump had made approximately $74.2 million through his association with the hotel. From 2014-2017, he was paid as much as $13.9 million.
As Global Witness explains:
“The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
“Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere.”
The Trump Organization has shrugged off responsibility in a statement following the news, but legal experts say it should have done its due diligence into the backgrounds of buyers. Arthur Middlemiss, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and a former head of the global anti-corruption program at JPMorgan, blames the Trumps directly:
“Those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.”
1 comment:
"Guzmán also has financial ties to the terrorist organization FARC"
Alternet should know better than to label the FARC as 'terrorist'.
The FARC is a Marxist group that had been fighting for justice in Columbia for 50+ years against the terrorist armies and paramilitaries of the Colombian state.
The FARC recently agreed to end hostilities and become peaceful members of Colombian society in a deal that seems to have escaped notice by the US mainstream media.
Post a Comment