Similarities to cash laundering: experts
U.S. politics and news coverage in a pro-Putin direction, The AP said. In 2006, Manafort and Davis signed a contract worth $10 million a year to work with Deripaska, The AP reported.
Also that year, a shell company called John Hannah LLC purchased Apartment 43-G in Trump Tower, about 20 stories down from Trump’s own triplex penthouse. Manafort confirmed that “John Hannah” is combination of Manafort’s and Davis’ respective middle names.
The LLC was set up in Virginia at the same address as Davis Manafort and of a Delaware corporation, LOAV Ltd., for which there are virtually no public records. It was LOAV that signed the contract with Deripaska — not the “public-facing consulting firm Davis Manafort,” as The AP put it.
A lawyer for John Hannah signed the deed on Apartment 43-G for $3.675 million in November 2006. But Manafort’s name did not become associated formally with the Trump Tower apartment until March 2015, three months before Trump announced, in the lobby 40 stories down, that he was entering the presidential race. On March 5, John Hannah LLC transferred the apartment for $0 to Manafort. A month later, he borrowed $3 million against the condo, according to New York City public records. A year later, Manafort was working on Trump’s campaign, first as a delegate wrangler, then as campaign manager. In August 2016, The New York Times published an investigation of Manafort, alleging he’d accepted $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments from a pro-Putin, Ukrainian political party. Manafort resigned as campaign manager. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said last week that Manafort “played a very limited role for a very limited period of time” in the Trump campaign.
Davis did not return WNYC’s calls for comment. In an email exchange with The AP, he disavowed any connection with the effort to burnish Putin’s image.
Buy. Borrow. Repeat.
Trump Tower 43-G wasn't Manafort’s only New York property.
In 2012, another shell company linked to Manafort, MC Soho Holdings LLC, purchased a fourth-floor loft in a former industrial building on Howard St. in SoHo for $2.85 million. In April 2016, Manafort transferred the unit into his own name and borrowed $3.4 million against it, according to property records. In 2013, yet another Manafortlinked shell company, MC Brooklyn Holdings, bought the townhouse at 377 Union St. in Carroll Gardens for $2,995,000. This transaction followed the same pattern: the home was paid for in full at the time of purchase, with no mortgage. And on Feb. 9, 2016, just after Trump won decisive victories in Michigan and Mississippi, Manafort took out $5.3 million of loans on the property.
Public records dated just days before Trump was sworn in as President show that Manafort transferred the Carroll Gardens brownstone from MC Brooklyn Holdings to his own name and refinanced the loans with the Federal Savings Bank, in the process taking on more debt. He now has $6.8 million in loans on a building he bought for $3 million, records show.
David Reiss, a professor of real estate law at Brooklyn Law School, initially expressed bafflement when asked about the transactions. Reiss then looked up the home’s value on Zillow, a popular source for estimating real estate values. The home’s “zestimate” is $4.5 million to $5 million. Reiss said unless there is another source of collateral, it is extremely unusual for a home loan to exceed the value of the property. “I do think that transaction raises yellow flags that are worth investigating,” he said.
Reached by phone, Federal Savings Bank President Calk (photo inset), one of Trump’s earliest fund-raisers and now a Trump economic adviser, said he couldn’t discuss the loan. But he expressed confidence it was “overcollateralized,” meaning more than sufficiently backed by the home’s value. In a statement, Manafort said, “As is standard, the loan amount is based on the appraised value of the property after renovation, not the value of the property as is.”
As of Feb. 1, city Buildings Department records show that the “borough commissioner has ordered all worked stopped” at the Carroll Gardens address “due to applicant withdrawal.”