Trump’s soft spot: Rich Russians
They fill his condos and invest in his luxury real estate projects
President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial soft spot for Russia is based on decades of courting wealthy Russians to buy condos in his luxury high-rises and invest in his other real estate ventures, a close look at his business dealings reveals.
Trump first traveled to Moscow in the 1980s to discuss renovating hotels there. After several bankruptcies made it hard to raise money in the USA for his high-end hotel and condominium projects since the 1990s, Trump, and later his children, traveled to Moscow to talk deals and attract buyers, according to interviews with people who have worked with Trump over the years and news accounts. They show far greater commercial ties between Trump and Russia than generally known.
Real estate brokers in New York, Florida and Dubai told USA TODAY that Trump properties still attract high-end buyers from Russia, as well as from other countries.
Dolly Lenz, a real estate broker in New York, said she sold about 65 units in Trump World Tower, a condominium tower at 845 U.N. Plaza in Manhattan, to Russian buyers looking for real estate investments in the late 1990s. “I had contacts in Moscow looking to invest in the United States,” Lenz said. “‘What do you have to recommend?’ They all wanted to meet Donald. They became very friendly.”
Ilya Reznik, who said he’s sold dozens of condominiums to Rus- sians in Trump properties in south Florida, said his clients like Trump’s reputation for high quality luxury that’s priced right. “They’re businessmen, not too many politicians,” Reznik said.
Gil Dezer, whose family built six Trump buildings with their own money in south Florida, said Russians buy Trump properties for the brand name. Dezer developed the property under Trump’s name, meaning Trump received a royalty fee at the time of the sale, “and the name stays on the building,” he said.
In 2008, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. told investors in Mos-
cow that the Trump Organization had trademarked the Donald Trump name in Russia and planned to build housing and hotels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi and to sell licenses to other developers, according to the Russian daily Kommersant.
“We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia. There’s indeed a lot of money coming for new-builds and resale reflecting a trend in the Russian economy and, of course, the weak dollar vs. the ruble,” Trump Jr. said at the time
These business dealings explain Trump’s comfort level with a country — and its authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin — when President Obama and both parties in Congress are alarmed over a series of Russian actions, the most recent being CIA allegations that the Russian government interfered in the presidential election.
NOMINATION CONCERNS This week, Trump named Rex Tillerson, the CEO and chairman of ExxonMobil, as his nominee for secretary of State. The nomination of Tillerson, who received an excellence award from Putin in 2014 and has partnered with Putin’s ally and Russian oil executive Igor Sechin, sparked concerns from Republican and Democratic members of Congress.
The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment. Company General Counsel Michael Cohen told the
Financial Times in October, “The Trump Organization does not have any properties in Russia and the press’ fascination with this narrative is both misleading and fabricated. Perpetuation of this false connection ... or any connection with Russia altogether — is yet another example of the press’s liberal bias towards Mr. Trump.”
The Obama administration and Congress assailed Putin for seizing Crimea from Ukraine and for teaming up with Syrian President Bashar Assad against rebels in a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Despite Putin’s crackdown on individual freedoms, Trump has praised his strong leadership style, called the CIA allegations about election meddling “ridiculous,” suggested during the campaign that he might be willing to let Russia keep Crimea and raised the prospect of working with Russia to end Syria’s long civil war.
Trump’s efforts to do business in Russia look like a string of failed projects.
In 1987, he was invited by Yuri Dubinin, the Russian ambassador to the United States, to discuss luxury hotel developments in Moscow and Leningrad. Earlier, Trump tried to convince the Reagan White House to let him handle nuclear disarmament talks with Moscow, according to news accounts at the time.
Around that time, Russians who had been authorized to buy state-owned enterprises in what was left of the Soviet Union were amassing fortunes and becoming the country’s first “oligarchs,” said Thomas Pickering, the first U.S. ambassador to the new Russian Federation, which was created after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Today, those oligarchs are close allies of Putin. PAGEANTRY IN MOSCOW Russian billionaire Aras Agala- rov spent $20 million to hold the Miss Universe Pageant that Trump brought to Moscow in 2013. The venue was Agalarov’s Crocus City Hall on the outskirts of Moscow. During Trump’s stay in Moscow, the two became so close that Trump even took part in a music video with Agalarov’s son, Emin.
“Mr. Trump spent almost a week here with us,” Agalarov told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper in an interview Nov. 9, the day after Trump won the election. “Emin had a request — if he could appear in his video. And Donald said, ‘ Well, I’ll have 10 minutes, if you can do it in one take.’ And it was done in one take.”
The billionaire denied media reports that he financed Trump: “I can’t finance myself, and I’m going to finance the president of the United States? We’re all in such a crisis that we don’t have time for the U.S. president. We’re thinking about how to get out of the economic situation we are in.”
Agalarov and his son told Russian media in 2013 that they were looking into other projects with Trump, potentially including a Trump Tower near Crocus City Hall, a project that could be worth up to $350 million. The project was put on hold when Trump ran for president.
“When Donald Trump was here in Moscow, he said a lot of good things about our country, our culture, our people,” Agalarov told Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2015. “And in his interviews he says that if he becomes president of the United States, he will certainly keep in mind that he has friends in Russia.”