Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Heh, has been a while since we've mentioned Trump and money laundering here. One from F6, 2016:

Donald Trump and Russia: a web that grows more tangled all the time
[...]
In 2008, Trump sold a six-acre oceanfront Palm Beach mansion for $95m – a record deal that netted him $53.6m. The buyer was Russian fertiliser billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, who was reported in the Panama Papers [ https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/panama-papers ] leaks to have used offshore law firms to hide more than $2bn-worth of art works, including pieces by Picasso, Van Gogh and Leonardo, from his wife in advance of their divorce.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124231918

To 2017 -- [...]Donald Trump and the mansion that no one wanted. Then came a Russian fertilizer king
[...]
Lambiet has visited many homes of wealthy owners with more money than taste, but he considered the Maison de l’Amitie in a class by itself. “It was just terrible-looking, really gaudy,” he said. “Nothing fit together — it was sort of haphazard inside.

[Sorta like his administration]

“There was a room with a floor made of cobblestones, and in the corner was a real wood oven for pizzas. It looked like an old Italian pizza place. Who does that in their house? ... I thought, he’s never gonna sell this. And he didn’t, the house stayed on the market for a couple of years.

“And then the Russian came along.”

“The Russian” was Dmitry Rybolovlev, a cardiologist-turned-potash-magnate (Russian newspapers called him “the Fertilizer King”) whose net worth was estimated in the financial press to be well north of $10 billion. By 2008, when he first inquired about the mansion, Trump had already cut the price to $100 million, and Rybolovlev offered even less, $75 million.

But Rybolovlev is well known for buying homes as if he’s spending Monopoly money. His 24-year-old daughter Ekaterina bought Skorpios, the 74-acre Greek island where Aristotle Onassis married Jackie Kennedy, for a price estimated at $150 million or more. Then there’s the family’s $88 million apartment overlooking Central Park West, the $20 million home in Hawaii acquired from actor Will Smith and the $135 million residence in the Swiss resort of Gstaad. (To be perfectly fair, that one consists of two houses.)

Trump, sensing his fish had taken the hook, hung tough on his price. On July 15, 2008, Rybolovlev bought the house for $95 million (Trump says credits on the closing costs brought the total package to $100 million), believed to be the biggest home sale in American history.

Although some real-estate publications made much of the fact that the mansion was on the market for nearly two years before it sold, Digges, the real-estate agent who sold it, wasn’t surprised. “When you’re sitting in that price range, there’s not 50 people in line waiting,” she said. “People with that kind of money are not readily available.”

Confidentiality agreements, she said, prevent her from discussing exactly how Rybolovlev came into the picture other than to say that “the client came to me on a referral.” Trump himself has said he never met Rybolovlev, who conducted the entire transaction through intermediaries.

In the rough-and-tumble Russian financial world, anybody with wealth like Rybolovlev is viewed with a certain degree of suspicion, and his business career — which includes a charge of murder, of which he was acquitted — has certainly had its share of adventures. Much of it is shrouded in mystery; he almost never talks to reporters.

But South Florida never got a chance to see him up close. Rybolovlev never lived in his new mansion and is believed to have visited only once. That may have been due in part to a terrible mold problem discovered after he bought it.

Perhaps more importantly, though, not long after the sale closed, Rybolovlev became ensnarled in a divorce from his wife Elena, a toxic spill that splashed on for seven years. In court papers, she accused him of hosting lascivious orgies involving young girls on his yacht; he had her arrested for jewel theft.

The divorce case ended in an undisclosed settlement in 2015. And last year, Rybolovlev gave up on the mansion, successfully seeking permission to tear it down and divide the land under it into three parcels.

By November, the first of them had already sold, drawing $34.34 million for 2.35 acres.

“I thought the Russian was crazy to buy the place at that price, but now it looks like he’ll at least break even,” mused gossip columnist Lambiet.

Probably not, countered real-estate agent Pohrer: Although Rybolovlev may make back his purchase price, he’s been paying about $1.4 million a year in taxes since 2008, as well as the considerable upkeep on the huge house. “Overall, he’s going to wind up losing a pretty penny on this, maybe around $20 million,” Pohrer said.

“I actually thought the price was a little low,” he added. “There’s really no other vacant coastal land in Palm Beach for sale — everything else is going to come with a house on it. And this was the biggest of the three parcels, so the others will go for less.”

Who exactly purchased the land remains a mystery. Legal documents associated with the sale list only the name of a holding company. “I would have thought I’d be able to find out the name of the buyer by now,” said Pohrer. “But I haven’t been able to. That surprises me.” So, maybe there’s still a surprise ending in store.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=129101196

2018 -- 9 Things We Could Learn From Trump’s Tax Returns
[...]Money Laundering
Of course, only a fool would report money laundering on their tax returns. Nonetheless, dollar amounts are what they are, and those would likely be reported. For example, Mr. Trump purchased a reportedly quite tasteless Palm Beach mansion in 2006 for $40 million, and then sold it in 2008 to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $100 million. reportedly never lived there, but at the time was in the midst of a divorce from his wife that was likely to net her a multi-billion dollar settlement. Was Mr. Trump assisting Mr. Rybolovlev in laundering money? Trump’s tax returns could reveal similar transactions that might raise interesting questions.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143584564

Interesting questions yet Teflon Trump got away with it all. And Manafort, Trump's ex-campaign manager taking Russian money.

and

Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
[...]* July 2008: Trump sells the Palm Beach estate Maison de L'Amitie to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for a record
$95 million. Trump bought the property for $41.35 million three years earlier and made only minor improvements.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=139377237

2019 -- I'm all in for a full and complete investigation of all politicians that are proven to have taken Russian money...
GOP CAMPAIGNS TOOK $7.35 MILLION FROM OLIGARCH LINKED TO RUSSIA
AUG 2017
[...]Deripaska has been closely connected to the Kremlin since he married into Boris Yeltsin's family in 2001, which literally includes him in the Russian clan known as "The Family."According to the Associated Press, starting in 2006, Deripaska made annual payments of $10 million to Paul Manafort through the Bank of Cyprus to advance Putin's global agenda.

Len Blavatnik's co-owner in RUSAL is his long-time business partner, Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. Blavatnik and Vekselberg hold their 15.8 percent joint stake in RUSAL in the name of Sual Partners, their offshore company in the Bahamas. Vekselberg also happens to be the largest shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus.

Another oligarch with close ties to Putin, Dmitry Rybolovlev, owns a 3.3 percent stake in the Bank of Cyprus. Rybolovlev is known as "Russia's Fertilizer King" and has been in the spotlight for several months as the purchaser of Trump's 60,000 square-foot mansion in Palm Beach. Rybolovlev bought the estate for $54 million more than Trump paid for the property at the bottom of the crash in the U.S. real estate market.

The convoluted web that links Putin's oligarchs to Trump's political associates and top Republicans is difficult to take in.

Trump and Putin have a common approach to governance. They rely heavily on long-term relationships and family ties. While there have been tensions between Putin and Deripaska over the years, the Kremlin came to Deripaska's rescue in 2009 when he was on the verge of bankruptcy by providing a $4.5 billion emergency loan through state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB), where Putin is chair of the advisory board.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=146913572