The Attorney General also sent referral letters today to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission, identifying possible violations of federal law for further investigation and legal action by those federal agencies.
WASHINGTON -- A major construction company owned by the Chinese government was awarded another contract this week to work on the Trump golf club development in Dubai, further raising questions about potential conflicts of interest between Donald Trump's presidency and his vast real estate empire.
Trump vowed his family business would not engage in any transactions with foreign government entities while he serves as president but the contract is just the latest in a series of business transactions involving his company and the Chinese government.
Trump’s partner, DAMAC Properties, awarded a $19.6 million contract to China State Construction Engineering Corp. for road and infrastructure work as part of the residential piece of Trump World Golf Club Dubai project called Akoya Oxygen, according to a news release dated Sunday. The development is expected to open later this year.
CSCEC was awarded a $32 million contract to build a six-lane road in early 2017, just as Trump was inaugurated, McClatchy reported in September. It was hired in February to construct one of the buildings at a cost of $163 million.
The latest contract — which involves three clusters of buildings consisting of 1,623 villas — was given based on a competitive bid, according to the company. The most recent news releases from DAMAC Properties omitted any reference to Trump.
“We are pleased to further strengthen our relationship with CSCEC, as we accelerate development in almost every part of our largest master community which will start to welcome its first residents at the end of 2018,” said Ali Sajwani, general manager of operations at DAMAC Properties.
Trump has been under fire in recent weeks — even from members of his own party — for making a deal to help save Chinese-controlled ZTE, just as his company was conducting additional business with Chinese-owned firms. He is also in the midst of negotiating a trade agreement with Beijing and working with China on persuading its neighbor, North Korea, to get rid of its nuclear weapons.
"This just furthers the troubling trend of the president's businesses benefiting from the actions of foreign governments," said Jordan Libowitz, spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "It raises serious questions as to whether his loyalties are divided. Will American foreign policy be impacted by the actions of foreign governments towards his personal business empire?"
Trump ignored calls to fully separate from his business interests when he became president. Instead, he placed his holdings in a trust designed to hold assets for his “exclusive benefit,” which he can receive at any time. He retains the authority to revoke the trust.
Trump received $141,000 in 2017 from the Dubai project, according to his financial disclosure statement. Trump's daughter, Ivanka — a senior White House adviser — received about $2 million in severance from the Trump Organization, according to her financial disclosure report.
The emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution forbids government officials from accepting gifts gifts, titles of nobility or emoluments from foreign governments, and that no benefit should be derived by holding office.
The Trump Organization agreed to not engage in any new foreign deals or new transactions with a foreign entity — country, agency or official — other than “normal and customary arrangements” made before his election.
The Trump Organization did not immediately return a message Thursday. In September, an official with the Trump Organization, which is run by the president’s adult sons, confirmed the company licensed its name and brand to DAMAC Properties and has entered into an agreement to manage the Dubai golf course. The official, who declined to have his name used, said the residential project and the golf course are “totally unrelated” despite marketing materials, including brochures, websites and news releases showing them intricately tied together. [https://goo.gl/Vpz3kA ]
AKOYA OXYGEN Embedded Promo Doc 18 pages
The Chinese company, known as CSCEC, is majority government-owned — according to Bloomberg and Moody’s, among others. It was listed as the 7th largest company in China and 37th worldwide with nearly $130 billion in revenues in 2014, according to Fortune’s Global 500 list.
The company, which has had a presence in the United States since the mid-1980s, was one of several accused by the World Bank of corruption for its role in the bidding process for a roads project in the Philippines and banned in 2009 from World Bank-financed contracts for several years.
The company’s contract is for work on the Trump World Golf Club Dubai project, which boasts of “living on a grand scale” with a golf course designed by American golfer Tiger Woods, thousands of sleek, modern villas, restaurants, shops, schools, nurseries and a lake. The development touts it will house Dubai’s first tropical rainforest complete with waterfalls and tropical birds under a sky dome.
“This unparalleled development provides luxury living on a grand scale, with over 2,000 hotel apartments of varying size, all offering exceptional views of the development, the lake and the lush fairways of the Trump World Golf Club Dubai,” according to a brochure. “The properties are fully furnished and our staff is available to you 24 hours a day, to ensure that you enjoy premium service on a par with the world’s finest hotels.”
Trump International Golf Club Dubai, part of a larger project built by DAMAC Properties on the outskirts of Dubai, includes more than 100 Trump-branded villas selling from $1 million to $4 million.
Hussain Sajwani, DAMAC’s chairman, offered the Trump Organization $2 billion in deals following Trump’s election, according to both sides. Trump said he rejected the offers to avoid conflicts of interest.
“Over the weekend, I was offered $2 billion to do a deal in Dubai with a very, very, very amazing man, a great, great developer from the Middle East,” Trump told reporters in January. “And I turned it down. I didn't have to turn it down because as you know I have a no conflict situation because I'm president... But I don’t want to take advantage of something.”
The attorney general of New York state sued the Donald J Trump charitable foundation, President Trump and three of his children on Thursday for violating state charity laws, alleging that the Trumps used charitable assets as “little more than a checkbook for payments to not-for-profits from Mr Trump” and his companies.
Foundation assets, acquired through tax-deductible donations, were used to settle legal claims against one of Trump’s golf clubs and to buy a painting of Trump to be displayed at another club, the suit alleges.
The lawsuit, filed by the attorney general, Barbara Underwood, on the morning of Trump’s 72nd birthday, seeks $2.8m in restitution and penalties from Trump and asks for the distribution of $1m in assets to other charities.
The lawsuit also seeks to dissolve the Trump Foundation and bar the Trumps from serving on the boards of any charitable organizations – Trump senior for 10 years and three of his children for one year.
In addition to Trump, the lawsuit names his children Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric.
Trump began tweeting soon after the charges were filed, dismissing the lawsuit as the work of “the sleazy New York Democrats” and claiming the foundation “took in $18,800,000 and gave out to charity more money than it took in, $19,200,000”.
“I won’t settle this case!” Trump tweeted on Thursday. If he does not settle the case, a trial could result, casting a prolonged spotlight on the inner workings of the Trump Organization and probably requiring the president’s personal involvement.
A statement from the Trump Foundation declared “this is politics at its very worst” and painted Underwood as a partisan apparatchik. Underwood, a career staffer and former acting US solicitor general who was promoted last month after her predecessor, Eric Schneiderman, resigned in disgrace, has said she will not seek election to the position which she plans to leave in the fall.
The lawsuit alleges that the foundation engaged in “at least five self-dealing transactions that were unlawful because they benefited Mr Trump or businesses he controls”, Underwood said in a statement.
“These include a $100,000 payment to settle legal claims against Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, $158,000 to settle legal claims against Trump National Golf Club, and $10,000 to purchase a painting of Mr Trump displayed at the Trump National Doral.”
Money used to pay those bills came not from Trump but from would-be charitable donors who paid into the foundation, the lawsuit said. “From 1987 through 2008, Mr Trump personally donated funds to support the foundation,” the suit reads. “Since 2008, however, Mr Trump has not contributed any personal funds to the foundation, which instead has been supported by donations from other persons and entities.”
“The foundation is little more than an empty shell that functions with no oversight from its board of directors,” the lawsuit alleges. “Trump ran the foundation according to whim, rather than law.”
The lawsuit follows an investigation of the Trump foundation that began in June 2016 under the previous New York attorney general, Schneiderman. That investigation followed on the Pulitzer prize-winning work of the Washington Post journalist David Farenthold and others.
Episodes of alleged wrongdoing highlighted by the lawsuit include a charity fundraiser for veterans that Trump held on 28 January 2016, when he was a presidential candidate. Trump held the benefit in lieu of participating in a presidential debate.
The lawsuit alleges that a Trump foundation filing claiming that the event was “to raise funds for veterans’ organizations” was in fact false, because “in reality, the fundraiser was a Trump campaign event in which the Foundation participated”.
“In violation of state and federal law, senior Trump campaign staff, including campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, dictated the timing, amounts and recipients of grants by the foundation to non-profits,” Underwood said in a statement.
To maintain their charitable status under New York state law, organizations are barred from engaging in most political activity.
Schneiderman, who served for seven years, had previously sued the Trump Organization on multiple fronts, and after the inauguration, Schneiderman’s office sued the Trump administration and congressional Republicans at least 100 times.
Shortly before his inauguration, Trump settled a fraud case brought against Trump University by the state attorney general’s office, then run by Schneiderman, for $25m.
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