Pretend you are a Russian gangster. Imagine you profit handsomely from a heroin or prostitution ring. What do you do with the money? The money trail is how countless gangsters have been nabbed. One solution is money laundering, which essentially, is transforming dirty money into legitimate money.
Few money laundering schemes are as effective as luxury real estate. Property values will always go up. So, it doesn’t really matter how much you pay for the place, the price will go up.
Unfortunately, you can’t anonymously buy property in America. Hence, if a Russian gangster laundered his money into a high end property, he would have to announce it to the world.
Trump Tower, however, became only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers. As a result, Trump Tower became a cesspool of Russian mafia.
Shielding illegal activity from authorities is the only reason properties would accept anonymous buyers.
Since President Trump won the Republican nomination, the majority of his companies’ real estate sales are to secretive shell companies that obscure the buyers’ identities, a USA TODAY investigation has found.
Over the last 12 months, about 70% of buyers of Trump properties were limited liability companies — corporate entities that allow people to purchase property without revealing all of the owners’ names. That compares with about 4% of buyers in the two years before. USAToday article
The FBI spent years searching for Russian gangster Ivankov. James Moody, chief of the bureau’s organized crime section said,
We were looking around, looking around, looking around. We had to go out and really beat the bushes. And then we found out that he was living in a luxury condo in Trump Tower.
Every floor of Trump Tower you could certainly find some nefarious illegal activity being run. A worldwide high-stake gambling ring was going on in the unit directly below Trump’s penthouse ABCNews article.
In fact, over the past several decades at least 13 Russian gangsters or oligarchs have lived or done business in Trump Tower. They don’t own one apartment. Rather, these gangsters would buy five or six apartments in Trump Tower — taking control of entire floors.
There is no denying that dirty Russian money saved Trump. Trump was in financial doldrums back then. His empire was on the verge of ruin. The massive debt Trump owed creditors, made him a sitting duck for gangsters. Trump needed money desperately.
Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant US attorney from the Reagan administration, who investigated Trump and Russia in the eighties said, “They saved his bacon.”
Trump became such a hero to Russian gangsters looking to launder their money, that it did not take too long before Trump flew to Russia to meet Russian politicians.
Reuters reported that a group of 63 Russia billionaires have invested nearly $100 million in several Trump properties in Florida. Donald Trump Jr.himself famously said in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” VanityFair article
Donald Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987. He stopped off in Moscow and Leningrad and met the most important Russian politicians. The Soviet Union was about to collapse and the entire Russian economy would transform to a market one. Overnight, all of the Russian state-held assets like coal, banking, transportation and communication could be purchased at auction.
The only people who could afford such spectacular assets were gangsters and government officials. These crooks suddenly had more money than they knew what to do with, and needed a way to launder it. Donald Trump was their answer. Donald Trump saved them and they saved Donald Trump.
I’ve just mentioned Trump Tower. All Trump properties were used by Russian mafia.
Trump Taj Mahal paid the largest fine ever levied against a casino for having “willfully violated” anti-money laundering rules. NewRepublic article
The bottom line is that Trump was a savior to Russian gangsters. Finally, a fault-proof method to launder their money. This is a fact. And now, another fact is that Russia helped Donald Trump get elected. What are we waiting for? Get the Russian spy out of the White House, before our country is destroyed.
I sure hope it isn’t too late…
