Red flags on Prez pal city realty deals
Three purchases, lots of questions
Manafort’s 2006 purchase of a Trump Tower apartment for all cash coincided with his firm’s signing a $10 million contract with a proVladimir Putin Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, revealed last week in an investigative report by The Associated Press.
Manafort recently borrowed nearly $7 million on the Carroll Gardens brownstone onl Union St. he purchased four years ago for nearly $3 million. The loans, dated Jan. 17, three days before President Trump’s inauguration, were made by a Chicago-based bank run by Steve Calk, a Trump fund-raiser and economic One federal agent not connected adviser. with the probes, but with experience
Nine current and former law enforcement in complex financial investigations, and real estate experts said after reviewing the real told WNYC that Manafort’s deals estate documents that this pattern merit scrutiny. Some said the purchases of purchases was “worth looking follow a pattern used by into.” The agent did not want to money launderers: buying properties speak for attribution. There are active with all cash through shell companies, investigations of Manafort’s then using the properties to Russian entanglements by the FBI, obtain “clean” money through the Treasury Department and the bank loans. In addition, given that House and Senate Select Intelligence Manafort is already under investigation committees. Manafort has for his foreign financial and denied wrongdoing and has called political ties, his New York property some of the allegations “innuendo.” transactions should also be reviewed, multiple experts said. Debra LaPrevotte, a former FBI agent, said the purchases could be entirely legitimate if the money used to acquire the properties was “clean” money.
Last spring, the the Obama administration’s Treasury Department was so alarmed by the growing flow of hard-to-trace foreign capital being used to purchase real estate through shell companies that it launched a special program to examine the practice within its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCen. The Geographic Targeting Order, or GTO, required that limited liability companies disclose the identity of the true buyer, or “beneficial owner,” transactions.
In February, FinCen reported initial results from its monitoring program. “About 30% of the transactions covered by the GTOs involve a beneficial owner or purchaser representative that is also the subject of a previous suspicious activity report,” it said. The Trump Treasury Department said it would continue the monitoring program. in property
Friends & business partners
According to reports, Manafort was first introduced to Donald Trump in the 1970s by Roy Cohn, the New York attorney and former aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Long active in GOP politics, Manafort also worked as a lobbyist for clients who wanted something from the politicians he helped elect. His former firm, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, represented dictators like Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines.
In the 2000s, Manafort created a new firm with Rick Davis. According to a recent investigative report by The AP, Manafort and Davis began pursuing work in 2005 with Deripaska, one of the richest businessmen in Russia. They pitched a plan to influence