Trump firm ‘eyed giving Putin $50m penthouse’

The planned Moscow tower deal was scrapped in 2016

President Donald Trump’s company considered offering Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million (Dh183 million) penthouse in a planned skyscraper in Moscow to make the building more desirable to rich buyers, according to the Russianborn real estate developer who was broker on the project.

Felix Sater, a felon, exgovernment informant and former Trump business associate, said on Thursday he came up with the idea as a way to reap extra profit from Trump Tower Moscow, which he said would have brought in as much as $500 million if it had been built.

Then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen approved of the idea, Sater said, adding that it came to him while “spitballing” marketing schemes.

It wasn’t clear how seriously the idea was ever pursued, or whether Trump knew about it. Trump tweeted on Friday morning that he “lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia,” but “put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project.”

The Moscow tower deal was scrapped in 2016, though the reasons remain unclear.