Discussion: The Undignified Fall Of Trump's Toronto Tower

A crook working with Russian gangsters; just the fine sort of person we should send to the White House. Shame! Shame! Shame!!!

Or you could short-sell any Trump interest and make more money than the Orange King Himself :stuck_out_tongue:

You’re getting close to the end game.

However, most likely what we’ll see is Trump will attempt to extort the US Treasury in some way as a condition of vacating the White House.

I was thinking ramora. Which would go better with the swim with sharks metaphor.

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Nah. I want to seem him impeached, and I want Mueller to uncover enough stuff that he is bankrupt and sleeping in the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

That is a really strange requirement. Usually owners are required to be there most if not all of the time.

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Another reason - investigators tend not to look into things that lose money, because they’re focused mainly on fraud where someone (if not the entire project) makes money. Also, the loss is a cost of doing business with dirty money - it’s better to get 70% of your money out clean than be stuck with a lot of dirty money you can’t use, especially when you can make it up with a markup in the source.

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This article doesn’t really state what the legal issue is here: It’s that Putin, who sat on the board of the Russian state owned Vneshconombank (VEB) and can be fairly assumed to have veto/approval authority on all major transactions, was laundering dirty/sanctioned Russian money through TT Toronto.

Alexander Schnaider put money into TT Toronto that he received from selling his ownership interest in a Ukrainian steel company to a Russian gov’t backed entity. VEB, Putin’s Bank, financed the transaction, which means the funds to pay Schnaider came from VEB and were specifically approved by Putin. The source of that money is from VNB held deposits. A lot of those deposits come from Russian Oligarchs and Putin himself. That money is dirty. It is money that is subject to US and global sanctions, and also has dubious sources - drugs, prostitution, illegal arms/commodities trading, human trafficking and terrorism.

Trump lent his brand to this hotel by way of a licensing arrangement in order to create an attractive money laundering vehicle. That helped to build relations with the Russian government and the Russian underworld. It also created incentives for Russian interests to invest in Trump properties and provide his businesses with much needed capital to finance his massive debt burden.

Keep in mind that Jared Kushner met with the head of VEB, Sergey Gorkov, in December 2016, likely because he needed massive inflows of loans to finance his $1 billion + debt load for 666 5th avenue and other interests. He was expecting sanctions to be removed so that he could get that money. That goodwill with the Russians was built up through transactions like Trump Tower Toronto. That’s why (at least I hope that’s why) Mueller is looking at this transaction.

IKR? The list of Trump business associates reads like the cast of “War and Peace”.

Well, it’s harder to create a successful business. Trump seems to find himself associated with a lot of business that don’t have much of a half-life but do coincidentally exist long enough to pay him millions in licensing fees.

Well my other thought of Russian involvement with Donald is just a foot in the door of “legitimate” business.

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