Russian;
(best russian accent)
I pay you $30 million too much - after big sale you invest $25 million in my company, keep $5 million for own pocket - hide tax returns - nobody ever know ..
Pretty close, just a little juicer.
Someone dig up the deeds of sale. On the front end, well it was a blatant attempt at hiding money from the old ex-wife. The Russian guy was involved in a bitter divorce and he needed to stash some loot before the division of assets. Seems there was some abuse allegations. Surprise, surprise. But them Russian divorces can get pretty expensive, the spouse was getting half of everything plus support. Pretty doubtful that anything close to one hundred million actually changed hands on the transactions. Hell, I believe Trump is claiming a ten percent seller's fee. Now I don't watch Selling LA, but ten percent seems pretty stout. Hell, more than ten percent. Ten million on top of a ninety million sale.
And on the back end, the carve outs, well betting good money that they didn't go to "people", they went to LLC's with owners hiding behind trusts and locations in the Cayman Islands, Bahamas, or Liechtenstein. Yeah, Liechtenstein, the country with more trusts than people. And it is the tip of the iceberg, because that is the thing.
Tump's real estate deals are going to LLC's, not individual people. And the snooty Trump people will claim that is the way everybody does it. Except it ain't. Even on the high end, those multi-million closings. Maybe ten or fifteen percent of them go to LLC's. But Tump's deals, it's like three out of four.
It absolutely reeks of money laundering. At the very best, it's shady, down-right shady. But if we get going down this rabbit hole it's going to get freaky. Really freaky. But I can tell you this much, one of the hottest trends in Russia among the financial elite is to have a born in America son or daughter. Yep, a good old fashioned anchor baby. And Trump is neck deep in that mess because of some of his holdings. Actually, it is probably incorporated in to their sales presentation.