Rumpole
Diamond Member
- Mar 20, 2023
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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.
This article in the New Republic was published in 2017, and somehow, I missed it. But, it does give me the idea that wondering if Trump is a "Putin Puppet', that this article documents, isn't too far off the mark, given the massive money laundering operation Russian Oligarchs, all of whom are in cahoots with Putin, used in the purchase of Trump condos.
Naturally, Trump probably had a 'hear no evil, see no evil' posture regarding it all. It defies credulity that he didn't hobnob with these guys, and knew what was going on.
https://newrepublic.com/article/143...ses-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate
In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City. The 38-year-old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army—his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam—he had clearly done quite well for himself. Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58-story edifice with gold-plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.
A monument to celebrity and conspicuous consumption, the tower was home to the likes of Johnny Carson, Steven Spielberg, and Sophia Loren. Its brash, 38-year-old developer was something of a tabloid celebrity himself. Donald Trump was just coming into his own as a serious player in Manhattan real estate, and Trump Tower was the crown jewel of his growing empire. From the day it opened, the building was a hit—all but a few dozen of its 263 units had sold in the first few months. But Bogatin wasn’t deterred by the limited availability or the sky-high prices. The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.
If the transaction seemed suspicious—multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money—there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises. “During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.” When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.
[...]
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. boasted at a real estate conference in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
Maybe Trump wasn't a Russian agent, but he was definitely a 'useful idiot', a very Kremlin way of looking at targets who don't actually become agents, it's the next best thing, especially if the useful idiot becomes a US President, don'tcha think?
And the article continues, with some really interesting details, from there.
Y'all keep saying 'Russia was a hoax'. Really? We had Trump' campaign manager doing work for big bucks for Viktor Yanukovych, we have all this Russian cash bankrolling Trump org. Somehow I don't think so. Maybe he wasn't a hard core 'conspirator', he was, at the minimum, Kremlin's useful idiot. He didn't try and stop the Russian meddling, he encouraged it, and when asked if he would accept Russian help, he said yes.
This article in the New Republic was published in 2017, and somehow, I missed it. But, it does give me the idea that wondering if Trump is a "Putin Puppet', that this article documents, isn't too far off the mark, given the massive money laundering operation Russian Oligarchs, all of whom are in cahoots with Putin, used in the purchase of Trump condos.
Naturally, Trump probably had a 'hear no evil, see no evil' posture regarding it all. It defies credulity that he didn't hobnob with these guys, and knew what was going on.
https://newrepublic.com/article/143...ses-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate
In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City. The 38-year-old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army—his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam—he had clearly done quite well for himself. Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58-story edifice with gold-plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.
A monument to celebrity and conspicuous consumption, the tower was home to the likes of Johnny Carson, Steven Spielberg, and Sophia Loren. Its brash, 38-year-old developer was something of a tabloid celebrity himself. Donald Trump was just coming into his own as a serious player in Manhattan real estate, and Trump Tower was the crown jewel of his growing empire. From the day it opened, the building was a hit—all but a few dozen of its 263 units had sold in the first few months. But Bogatin wasn’t deterred by the limited availability or the sky-high prices. The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.
If the transaction seemed suspicious—multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money—there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises. “During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.” When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.
[...]
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. boasted at a real estate conference in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
Maybe Trump wasn't a Russian agent, but he was definitely a 'useful idiot', a very Kremlin way of looking at targets who don't actually become agents, it's the next best thing, especially if the useful idiot becomes a US President, don'tcha think?
And the article continues, with some really interesting details, from there.
Y'all keep saying 'Russia was a hoax'. Really? We had Trump' campaign manager doing work for big bucks for Viktor Yanukovych, we have all this Russian cash bankrolling Trump org. Somehow I don't think so. Maybe he wasn't a hard core 'conspirator', he was, at the minimum, Kremlin's useful idiot. He didn't try and stop the Russian meddling, he encouraged it, and when asked if he would accept Russian help, he said yes.
