Maison de L’Amitie and the Trump Organization’s Corrupt Overseas Developments
This article covers Trump’s $95 million real estate transaction with a Russian oligarch and the Trump Organization’s corrupt overseas developments. It is the seventh entry in the series “Donald Trump, Corruption, and the Insidious Influence of Organized Crime.” While it is not necessary to read the earlier entries, it is recommended.
The first article examined Donald Trump’s early real estate career in Manhattan and his involvement in civic corruption and with organized crime.
The second article covered Trump’s connections to organized crime and civic corruption as a casino magnate in Atlantic City.
The third article dealt with the death of Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn, Trump’s purchase of Resorts International, and his financial downfall.
The fourth article covered Trump’s early links with Eurasian Organized Crime in New York and Atlantic City.
The fifth article examined Donald Trump’s second visit to Moscow in 1996 and Russian investments in Trump Organization real estate developments.
The sixth article covers Donald Trump’s relationship with Felix Sater and the Trump Organization’s corrupt Soho and Toronto developments.
This article is an excerpt from my book, While We Slept: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of American Democracy, available here.
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In 2004, Donald Trump purchased Maison de L’Amitie, a 62,000-square-foot, 17-bedroom mansion in Palm Beach for $41 million.
Four years later, as the Florida real estate market began to crash and the US was lurching into the subprime mortgage crisis, a family trust established by the billionaire Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev paid Trump $95 million for the mansion.
Rybolovlev made his fortune during the privatization of the Russian chemical industry, becoming chairman of Uralkali, a potash fertilizer exporter. In 1996 he was charged with murdering a competitor and spent 11 months in jail before the case was dismissed.
Rybolovlev is known to be close to Yuri Trutnev, a senior Putin advisor.
At the time of the sale, the mansion was in a state of disrepair and suffering from a serious mold problem. Rybolovlev, who never stepped foot in the mansion, had it torn down and divided into lots which sold separately.
“The oligarchs are just fronts for Putin,” Trump told Michael Cohen following the purchase, as Cohen recounts in his memoir Disloyal. “He puts them into wealth to invest his money. That’s all they are doing — investing Putin’s money.”
According to Cohen, Trump believed Putin was far and away the richest man in the world, controlling 25% of the Russian economy and companies like Gazprom.
Trump further believed that there was a bank in Switzerland with a single customer, Putin, and that he was worth over a trillion dollars.
“Putin isn’t president of Russia,” Cohen recalled Trump telling him, “He’s the ruler. He’s the dictator. The Tsar. He can do whatever he wants. He’s going to be leader for the duration of his life.”
Cohen claimed that Trump believed that Putin himself was the real buyer of Maison de L’Amitie.
Russian Money and Eurasian Organized Crime at the Trump Ocean Club Panama
In 2005, Trump began working on a development in Panama, the world’s most infamous money laundering sink, called the Trump Ocean Club.
Roger Khafif, a Miami-based developer who had promoted Trump properties at sales meetings in Russia, pitched the idea of a Panama property during a meeting at Trump Tower.
Trump got behind the idea, which was announced in 2007, and used the project to provide Ivanka with experience in the property business. Construction was financed by Khafif’s Newland International Properties Corp. through a bond underwritten by Bear Stearns.
In order to sell the bond, they needed to prove that they could sell the apartments. The man responsible for these presales was a Brazilian named Alexandre Henrique Ventura Nogueira, who met with Ivanka ten times during the project.
Nogueira had arrived in Panama from Spain, where in 2005 authorities had opened proceedings to fine him for money laundering violations. Nogueira, whose company was called Homes Real Estate, told reporters that 50% of the Trump Ocean Club’s sales went to Russians and that some were part of the “Russian mafia.”
Nogueira’s international sales director was a Russian living in Canada named Eleanora Michailova. She later explained that Homes would set up Panamanian shell companies for customers that would then engage Khafif’s company Newland in pre-sales agreements, a practice that concealed the identity of the buyers.
In the case of four of these companies, the man listed as the director was Homes Real Estate’s representative in Ukraine, Igor Anopolskiy.
In March 2007, Anopolskiy was arrested in Kyiv on charges of human trafficking. Anopolskiy had been a shareholder in a Ukrainian travel agency among whose previous shareholders included Oxana Marchenko, wife of a former Ukrainian presidential chief of staff Viktor Medvedchuk.
Medvedchuk, a vocal opponent of Ukraine’s pro-EU, anti-corruption protest movement, is known for his close ties to the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin is the godfather of his and Marchenko’s daughter.
As of this writing, Ukrainian authorities have charged Medvedchuk with treason for his associations with Russia.
One of Nogueira’s most important pre-sales customers was a Columbian con artist and drug money launderer named David Helmut Murcia Guzmán.
According to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Guzmán laundered narcotics proceeds through DMG Group, a pyramid scheme that attracted illicit funds from across the world.
Guzmán was allegedly involved in moving cash for both Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Columbia (FARC), and the paramilitary organization Autodefensas Unidas de Columbia, two ideologically diametrically opposed groups with complex links to the narcotics trade in Columbia at the time. Both are classified by the US government as terrorist organizations.
Nogueira purchased ten units at the Trump Ocean Club for Guzmán. Guzmán’s lawyer in Panama claims that the units were purchased with cash brought over by Columbian “mules.”
Another individual listed as a director of four Panamanian shell companies used to purchase pre-sale units is Alexander Altshoul.
A Belorussian residing in Toronto, Altshoul is known for maintaining close relations with Canada’s Russian and Eastern European populations. On two separate occasions his name came up as being involved in real estate fraud during the course of legal proceedings against separate parties.
Both Altshoul and Nogueira have acted at foreign representatives of Guzmán’s DMG Group.
Altshoul brought in family and friends to put deposits down on ten Trump Ocean Club apartments and one hotel unit. One of his investing partners was a Moscow-based relative Arkady Vodovosov, who in 1998 was jailed for five years in Israel on charges of kidnapping and threats to kill and torture.
In 2008, Trump held a star-studded bash at Mar-a-Lago both to celebrate the success of pre-sales at the Trump Ocean Club and to prompt further business.
Nogueira was in attendance, and was introduced by Trump as “the guy selling Panama.”
Altshoul also attended alongside another Homes Real Estate partner from the former Soviet Union named Stanislav Kavalenka.
Kavalenka, who served as officer on three Panamanian shell companies that had purchased units, had been accused by Canadian prosecutors four years earlier of economically benefiting from the forced prostitution of Russian women. The charges were withdrawn when the women in question failed to show up to court.
At the Trump Ocean Clubs inauguration ceremony in 2011, Trump was photographed standing next to Andrey Bogdanov and Ivan Kazanikov, two Russians who bought at least six units for $4.4 million.
Bogdanov had worked at the Russia-based Master-Bank before it’s license was revoked for failing to observe money laundering laws. Bogdanov is also a director and shareholder in a company called ZAO Makmar alongside Boris Bulochnik, a principal at Master-Bank who was arrested “in absentia” by Russian authorities for having intentionally bankrupted the bank.
Global Witness was told by a convicted money launderer and former CIA contractor that Bogdanov and Kazanikov operated fronts that laundered money out of the former Soviet Union.
Kazanikov has sat on the Trump Ocean Club’s “committee of merchants” for over five years. Both purchased their units through Nogueira, who is currently being investigated in Brazil for money laundering and is now a wanted fugitive in Panama.
Trump Organization Developments and Branding Deals in the Former Soviet Union
The Trump Organization has on numerous occasions attempted to build Trump branded towers in former Soviet states.
In 2006, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka traveled to Ukraine and met with government officials to discuss building a hotel and golf course in Kyiv and a hotel and yacht club in Yalta, which is currently part of Russian-occupied Crimea. Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif from Bayrock were involved in exploring some of the early deals.
The Trump Organization also engaged Dmitry Buriak, whose company DeVision is one of the largest real estate developers in Ukraine.
DeVision’s parent company, Petrochemical Holding, had a managing director who was convicted of abuse of power in 2002 involving his work with Gazprom.
Buriak was investigated by Lithuanian authorities over whether he and another company owned by Petrochemical Holding had been used by Russian intelligence to funnel money to the ruling Lithuanian Labor Party.
A recent Lithuanian investigation into political and electoral interference found that both Buriak and Petrochemical Holding posed “a threat to the interests of Lithuania.”
It remains unclear why the Trump Organizations projects in Ukraine never came to fruition.
In September, 2010, David Orowitz, senior vice-president for acquisitions and development at the Trump Organization, traveled to Riga, the capital of the former Soviet state of Latvia. Orowitz was looking for potential sites for a Trump branded hotel and entertainment complex.
In June 2011, Ivanka Trump held a four hour meeting at Trump Tower with Igor Krutoy and a Latvian businessman named Viesturs Koziols to discuss the Riga project.
Krutoy is a famous composer in Russia, has received official state honors for his music and served as a celebrity representative for Putin’s 2018 re-election campaign.
Originally from Ukraine, Krutoy is also close to Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch who funded Paul Manafort’s work on behalf of the Kremlin’s preferred President Viktor Yanukovych.
After meeting with Ivanka, Krutoy held a press conference in Riga to tout the potential Trump project.
Standing alongside Krutoy to help promote the project was Ainārs Šlesers, a businessman and former Latvian deputy prime minister.
Šlesers also met with Donald and Ivanka Trump in New York and detailed plans were drawn up and exchanged with the Trump Organization.
The project hit a snag when Krutoy and Koziols were called in for questioning by the Latvian Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau, which was investigating Šlesers for having used his public office to influence decisions on property developments that benefitted companies he was a hidden owner of.
The inquiry became known as the “Oligarch Affair.”
Leaked transcripts of secret recordings made during the investigation show that Šlesers told potential investors that he had “an agreement with Trump,” and that they were “ready to make the Trump Plaza Riga.”
Latvian officials requested that the FBI interview Trump. The Trump Organization provided the FBI with written answers and the inquiry was pursued no further.
In 2012, plans were announced for a $250 million Trump Tower to be built in Batumi, a port city on the Black Sea located in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.
Typical of the Trump business model, the Trump Organization provided their brand while financing came from the Silk Road Group, a holding company with an unorthodox corporate structure that was established in Georgia shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The project was the brainchild of Giorgi Rtskhiladze, a Soviet-born Georgian-American who initially invited Trump’s ex-wife Ivana to Georgia to discuss the concept in 2009 before taking the idea to his friend in New York, Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and a vice president at the Trump Organization.
Cohen entered Trump’s orbit after investing in Trump World Tower. In 1994, he married a Ukrainian-American named Laura Shusterman and through her became friends with Felix Sater.
Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, was convicted of a money laundering related crime in Ukraine in 1993. Fima Shusterman set Cohen up in a partnership with two Soviet-born partners in the taxi business.
Fima and his wife later bought three units of Trump World Tower through Cohen, and Federal investigators told Seth Hettena that Fima Shusterman introduced Cohen to Trump.
The nature of Trump and Shusterman’s relationship is unclear.
Cohen’s uncle owned the El Caribe Country Club in Brighton Beach, which had rented space for years to Evsei Agron, Marat Balagula and Boris Nayfield, leading figures in the Brooklyn-based Russian/Israeli mafia.
As Cohen tells it, he worked in the club as a teenager and was influenced by the gangsters in terms of his attitude, but was not a gangster himself. Cohen later owned a stake in the club, only selling after Trump was elected President.
In 1999, Cohen received a $350,000 check from an NHL player named Vladimir Malakhov at a time in which the Russian mafia was regularly extorting Russian professional athletes.
Though the money was ostensibly related to a Florida apartment deal, Malakhov’s agent later testified that the money was meant to go to Vitaly Buslaev, a leader of the Moscow-based Izmailovskaya criminal syndicate.
Cohen traveled with Rtskhiladze to Georgia twice to scope out potential sites. The Trump Organization hoped that Batumi would serve as a launchpad for several Trump Towers in the region.
Cohen and Rtskhiladze also looked into the development of what was called the Trump Diamond in Astana, Kazakhstan. The pair traveled to Astana, where they met with then-Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov to discuss the project.
The Trump Organization went as far as to sign a letter of intent and had the architect John Fotiadis, who also worked on Trump Tower Batumi, design an obelisk-shaped building for the site. The Trump Diamond eventually lost out to another bidder.
In 2012 alone, Trump sought to trademark his name in Armenia, Belarus, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
Unlike the Trump Diamond, Trump Tower Batumi moved forward. Rtskhiladze formed Silk Road Transatlantic Alliance, a Delaware-incorporated partnership with George Ramishvili, chairman of the Silk Road Group. Ramishvili had made a fortune after the fall of the USSR transporting oil from former Soviet states to be sold in European markets.
The Silk Road Group does business throughout the former Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf in energy, transportation, banking, winemaking and digital media.
In 2005, it was announced the BTA Bank, the largest financial institution in Kazakhstan, would provide hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to help develop Georgia, including the development of hotels in Batumi. All of the loans went to subsidiaries of the Silk Road Group.
According to reporting in The New Yorker, BTA’s then deputy chairman may have been a hidden partner in several of these subsidiaries. If true, it constituted bank fraud.
Prior to the Trump Organization’s engagement with the Silk Road Group to build Trump Tower Batumi with the financing partially provided by BTA Bank. BTA was involved in complex litigation involving its former chairman, Mukhtar Ablyazov, who stands accused of embezzling a fortune from the bank.
The case also involves complex regional politics involving the powerful officials in Kazakhstan who may be pursuing the litigation for their own corrupt purposes.
Felix Sater is also involved and has been accused by BTA of laundering some portion of hundreds of millions of dollars of embezzled funds through Trump properties.
Ablyazov’s son-in-law, Ilya Khrapunov, stands accused of laundering funds embezzled by his father through purchases at the Trump Soho.
Ablyazov and the Silk Road Group had been past business partners, owning a bank together in Georgia. A lawyer for BTA later accused the Silk Road Group of participating in Ablyazov’s embezzlement scheme. A $50 million settlement was eventually reached.
The Trump Organization was legally required to perform due diligence to ensure that it wasn’t dealing with money linked to criminal activity. Trump visited Georgia in 2012 to promote the project and was paid a $1 million upfront licensing fee.
BTA’s assets, and all of its records, including those involving its dealings with the Silk Road Group, are now held under the authority of Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund. The fund is directed by Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the country’s former dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev.
In addition to being a majority owner of BTA, Kulibayev also sits on the board of Gazprom.
The Trump Organization dropped out of Trump Tower Batumi immediately after Trump was elected.
A month after Trump traveled to Georgia, the Trump Organization announced it was pursuing a project in the post-Soviet state of Azerbaijan.
Trump Tower Baku, which never officially opened and partially burned down in 2018, was located in an unglamorous section of the Azerbaijani capital, which makes little sense for a supposedly five star hotel and residence.
The Azerbaijanis working on the project were family members of Ziya Mammadov, a notoriously corrupt billionaire who has served as Transportation Minister of the oil rich nation on the Caspian since 2002.
It is widely believed that Mammadov used his children as fronts and that he was the silent owner of Baku XXI Century, the company that actually owned Trump Tower Baku. A network of shell companies linked to Mammadov have reaped immense profits through lucrative contracts approved by the Transportation Ministry.
Ziya Mammadov has a close financial relationship with the Darvishi brothers, members of an Iranian family linked to the Revolutionary Guard.
Leaked American diplomatic cables revealed that Kamal Darvishi formerly ran a Revolutionary Guard-controlled business that acquired materials to build ballistic missiles and was sanctioned for aiding Iran’s nuclear program.
Mammadov ensured that the Darvishi’s were awarded state contracts, including the construction of the Baku-Iranian Astara highway. American diplomats in the region assumed that Mammadov corruptly awarded overpriced construction contracts to Iranian Revolutionary guard fronts that he himself was a hidden partner in.
At the same time, Mammadov was engaging in a series of large scale construction projects, including Trump Tower Baku, that could have been an excellent way for him to launder the kickbacks he received.
The Revolutionary Guard, which was under severe sanctions at the time, could have used the Mammadov-linked shell companies to move money into the international financial system.
The Trump Organization has publicly characterized its involvement in the project as consisting of little more than a simple licensing deal. In fact, they also signed a technical-services agreement in which the Trump Organization agreed to assist in making sure the building was up to Trump design standards.
The designer of the hotel and several of the contractors visited Trump Tower in New York in order to secure approval for their various plans. Ivanka Trump visited Baku in 2014, toured the site and was deeply involved in design issues during the construction of the building.
Prior to the Trump Organization’s involvement, contractors involved in the construction of the tower were paid in large sums of cash and bribery and graft were routine. Like Trump Tower Batumi, the Trump Organization dropped out of Trump Tower Baku after he was elected president.