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One day in October 2007, a famous realtor wearing a light blue coat and tie was coming down from an endless limousine in Toronto's financial district. In front of a group of photographers, he kisses a golden shovel. To his left, with a decorative shovel in his hand, was his partner in the construction of a $ 500 million (325 million) Canadian skyscraper whose work was to begin that day : a Russian-Canadian billionaire who he had built his fortune in the collision between communism, capitalism and the KGB at the fall of the Soviet empire.
Representatives of the project financiers were also present, an Austrian bank accused shortly after not having verified the origins. money from his former Soviet customers.
The flashes of the photographers were shining on the shovels while the two magnates, all smiling, flung them into a square of land where the word Trump was painted. So began work for the Trump International Hotel and Tower Toronto. People want to own the things I do at all costs, Donald Trump told an interviewer that day, stating that the new skyscraper, in addition to other badets, would be higher than other buildings.
The Financial Times a ten-month investigation into Trump Toronto funding. Legal documents, signed statements and two dozen interviews of knowledgeable people about the project and the money transited through them show that this speculation links the American president to a murky post-Soviet world, where the politics and personal enrichment intermingle
. The money flows we have seen raise questions about Trump's vulnerability to undue influence now that he sits at the White House. Among other things, we found evidence that the president's current partner in the Toronto real estate project has authorized a secret payment of $ 100 million to a Moscow fixer who represents investors close to the Kremlin. This payment was part of a series of transactions that generated millions of dollars for speculation lenders in Toronto, making millions also reflect the future president.
A month after the inauguration of the 2007 work, Trump wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal stating that the funding of our Trump Toronto was a testament to the strength of the Trump name and brand within the financial community. But when we sent questions to the Trump organization to write this article, the company declined to answer, saying: The Trump organization did not check, build, or sell the Trump International Hotel and Tower Toronto. As a result, he did not participate in any way in financing the project. The role of the company is limited to the granting of the use of the brand and the management of the hotel and residences until June 2017, when the date "Agreement was terminated
just this approach to the origin of money that fueled the entrepreneurial career Trump has worried many who have looked closely. After a series of bankruptcies in the 1990s and early 2000s, which left the real estate business inherited from his father in an almost total inability to secure loans from major banks, Trump began to turn to more and more equivocal financiers. He could obtain loans from Deutsche Bank, with whom he had a long and contrasting relationship, but from the beginning of the millennium, he also adopted a new model, in which he authorized the use of his trademark for the construction of skyscrapers. The Trump Organization then managed the procurement
At that time, the new oligarchs of the former Soviet Union sought foreign refuges for their wealth. In 2008, Trump's son, Donald Jr. said at a convention in the real estate industry: The Russians account for a disproportionate share in many of our activities […] A lot of money is flowing from Russia. Part of this money went through the sale of real estate units belonging to the Trump brand, in which Trump was entitled, in some cases, to a portion of the proceeds.
An alleged Kazakh money laundering network has spent millions of dollars through the sale of apartments in Trump SoHo; a Russian oligarch bought Trump a property in Palm Beach in 2008 for $ 95 million, more than twice what Trump had paid him four years ago; In Florida, 63 Russians, some of whom have high-level political knowledge, spent $ 100 million buying real estate in seven Trump luxury high-rise buildings, according to Reuters. The money did not come exclusively from the former Soviet Union: in Trump Panama, some was apparently due to Latin American drug traffickers.
In recent years it has become increasingly clear that many oligarchs have built their fortunes during the fall of the Soviet Union protected their badets by promoting the interests of power crimes in their country. This wealth circulates in Western markets, often disguised behind facade companies. The Trump area, real estate, has always been exposed to anonymous money infusions. A significant portion of high-end US real estate sales go through companies whose true owners remain secretive. A US Treasury survey, last year, revealed that a buyer of three-lane luxury properties was suspicious.
Trump broke with the presidential tradition by refusing to sell his holdings in the dozens of companies listed the Trump Organization is composed, or to publish his tax returns, which could shed light on which seems to be a multitude of conflicts of interest. In May of last year, his decision to remove James Comey from the FBI leadership sparked the appointment of Robert Mueller, himself a former FBI chief, as a special advisor to investigate the links between the Russian government and the staff The Trump election
Witness to the Senate secret service commission, Comey was asked if the investigation could reveal problems unrelated to the election campaign. He replied that in any complex investigation, when you start opening jars, you sometimes discover things of criminal significance not related to the main investigation.
Paul Manafort, one of Trump's campaign directors, has already experienced his skin, forced to defend himself against the charge of having recycled $ 30 million (this that he denies) in relation to his consulting work for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser, pleaded guilty to a series of accusations, including lies about a lobbying deal he had made with Turkey. The rest of Mueller's investigation in general is carefully mastered, but it is clear that the Special Prosecutor considers past financial affairs as legitimate objectives.
Tom Warner, an American business investigator specializing in Russia and Ukraine, one of those we interviewed, convinced that one of Trump's distinctive traits is the alignment of his interests with those of the people who provided him with the money necessary to fuel his career. When Trump turns his back on American historical allies and suggests that Russia should be readmitted to the G8, some badysts see us behind other reasons. The issue is followed with even more attention this week, after Trump took part in a NATO summit in Brussels, went to London to meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May and is preparing to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. Putin, or the successor he will choose, will still be there long after Trump leaves the White House, Warner says. And Trump [e i suoi figli] needs the family business model to get up
The story of Trump Toronto demonstrates what it means for the United States to have a leader whose model of # 39; s business has long been trading its trademark with money of dubious origin, without asking any questions.
Trump Toronto should have been completed in 2010: 65 floors containing 261 hotel rooms and luxury apartments, all covered with a glittering glbad facade. But work continued, and in October Alex Shnaider, the billionaire who had shoveled three years earlier with Trump, spent another $ 40 million on the project. The speculation then brought another million dollars back to Trump himself, and some documents that the Financial Times might see asking questions about how he made money at Shneider's company before the decision was made. 39, invest that extra $ 40 million. in Trump Toronto
A few months earlier, according to documents, Shnaider had approved the payment of a $ 100 million secret commission to introductors (presenters, intermediaries) representing the interests of the Kremlin. The payment was to facilitate the sale of the most popular activity of his group, the share of the huge Zaporizhstal steel mill, in eastern Ukraine, and accounted for more than 10 % of the sale price (850 million dollars).
In 2017, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the sale of the factory had been funded by the Vnesheconombank (Veb), a bank controlled by the Russian state, whose president at the time. era was Vladimir Putin. But this $ 100 million commission had not yet been declared. It has also not been revealed that some legal documents, in a recent trade dispute between Shnaider and his trading partner, hinted that some of the money had fallen into the pockets of officials of the Russian government. If this were the case, the steel agreement could conflict with anti-corruption laws in Canada and potentially in other Western countries, where it was considered a criminal offense. to pay foreign officials to obtain a commercial advantage
. The $ 100 million sale had been perfected and the proceeds had been poured into the coffers of the Shnaider Company, which had used a portion to fund Trump Toronto. Tom Keatinge, a former JPMorgan banker who is now dealing with financial crimes at the Rusi (Royal United Services Institute, a London think-tank), said that if the payment of $ 100 million was judged to be a pot- Wine, the flow of money poured into Trump Toronto through Shnaider would justify the badertion that the Trump organization would benefit from the proceeds of a crime, and therefore used as a opportunity to launder dirty money. Financial crime experts say the possibility that Trump and his company will be accountable to the court depends on what he and other managers knew (or should have known) about the source of funds of the member.
The Trump organization has adopted a "due diligence" approach (verification of previous activities of a trading partner) that a former member who prefers to keep anonymous has defined an indifference deliberate. According to a Bloomberg article in 2017, Abe Wallach, a former Trump organization executive, said: Donald is not doing due diligence.
Shnaider, born in St. Petersburg and raised in Toronto, has accumulated a fortune such as many business badociates of Donald Trump, he has his roots in the tumultuous last years of the Soviet Union. Many oligarchs of today are trying to portray themselves as mere businessmen, leaving their battles to death to enrich themselves in the 90s are lost in the memory. But with the gradual growth of their influence in the West, it becomes more important to understand what ties they have with the authoritarians and kleptocrats in their homeland. And this is especially true in the case of people who have done business with a president whose election staff is currently under investigation for collusion with the Kremlin.
Russia has long been badociated with dirty money. from the main US Senate investigative committee and veteran of many money laundering investigations. Anyone who received significant funds from the Soviet Union should have known that he was at high risk and should have done a thorough examination to make sure that the money was clean.
Shnaider's rise to the Olympus of Canada's wealthiest men (already 36 years of age on the Forbes billionaires list) he was led by Boris Birshtein, his father-in-law and mentor in business. Convivial and ambitious, Birshtein (born in Soviet Lithuania and emigrated to Canada) enjoyed the rare privilege of Western entrepreneurs to cross the Iron Curtain. I have been doing business with the Soviet Union for many years, he told an interviewer in 1993. I started with Brezhnev and I managed to make myself a unique position, I I met a lot of people and I became friends with a lot of very powerful people.
In May we talked to a former KGB officer who was working in the '80s foreign spy agency. He told us that the Communist Party and the KGB, while the Soviet Union was sinking, had made a lot of efforts to raise funds abroad. He also stated that "in the late 1980s, Birshtein was one of the western businessmen whose companies had been linked to KGB personalities involved in the efforts of the US. spying agency to build business interests abroad. Birshtein told us that it would be absurd and patently false to say that the businessman was a KGB agent. The lawyer added, however, that Birshtein remembers agreeing to participate, in the mid-1980s, in a Soviet plan to launch international joint ventures led by Georgij Arbatov, director of a prestigious Moscow think tank. According to a report from a deserter published years later, Arbatov was also linked to the KGB, codenamed Vasily.
Birshtein's lawyer stated that the joint venture agreement, proposed and formalized bench, never really translated into projects of some relevance, and was officially completed shortly thereafter. He added that Birshtein did not know that Abatov was somehow affiliated with the KGB, but noted that affiliation to the KGB or to other branches of the former Soviet state was extraordinarily common in the Soviet Union.
The only proven link of Birshtein with a KGB character. In 1991, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Birshtein company recruited Leonid Veselovskij as an economic consultant, with a one – year contract. Birshtein's lawyer stated that his client's company had hired Veselovsky because he had a PhD in economics and was a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee. But the former KGB official told us that Veselovsky had also served as a senior officer in the KGB section dedicated to operations abroad and had been the creator of the KGB money laundering mechanism. . (It was not possible to contact Veselovsky to know his version: the former KGB official said that he had disappeared without a trace.)
While Birshtein cultivated his contacts with the Soviet quarrel, Russian parents of Shnaider had joined a wave of Jewish emigration, settling in Toronto in 1982, in a neighborhood filled with immigrants. They had bought a grocery store, where the young Shnaider was filling the shelves. He was attracted to the business world and, in the early 1990s, Birshtein introduced him to the wild capitalism that settled in the former Soviet Union, ending in the orbit of one of the most infamous figures of this period. links with American crime have continued Trump throughout his career. For Alex Shnaider, the link with an alleged Russian gangster goes through his former father-in-law
Sergey Mikhailov, known as Mikhas, widely recognized as the leader of what in the 90s and early 2000s was considered as the criminal organization more powerful than Moscow: the Solntsevskaja Bratva. The best FBI organized crime expert in Russia in the 1990s said the group's activities included extortion, drug trafficking, murder and money laundering. In a rare interview with the Financial Times in June, Mikhailov denied everything, saying that Solntsevskaja does not exist. A well-planted man in a purple-red plaid jacket and a Moscow office decorated icons of the Orthodox Church repeated that it was only a man of the same name. business like any other, having interests in trade, tourism and real estate. . The former free wrestling champion added that given the turbulence of the post-Soviet years, my success is still alive.
Mikhailov, 60, told us that he had met Birshtein – a very talented businessman – on the occasion of a meeting with the Moldovan president in 1995, and that they had immediately accepted. He has trusted me and it is a very important factor in business. He said that they had big plans for their companies: the most ambitious was to renew a pipeline that went from Central Asia to Ukraine. Mikhailov said his job was to provide technical expertise, while Birshtein had to convince the authorities to support the project.
He had excellent knowledge of Ukraine, Mikhailov said. As far as I know, he could reach the president and his entourage. (Birshtein, through the intermediary of his lawyer, said that he was never a friend of Leonid Kuchma, the Ukrainian president of the time.) Mikhailov also remembered meeting with the Birshtein's young protégé, Alex Shnaider, in a restaurant in Belgium, where Birshtein
Shnaider's lawyer did not answer a question about this alleged meeting with Mikhailov, stating that his client was not He did not remember it. He also stated that Birshtein had met Mikhailov a few times, but that he had never been involved in the pipeline project, that he had no relationship with him. 39, affairs with him and that he was not aware of his alleged criminal activity.
Mikhailov he said that the partnership project with Birshtein abruptly stopped when he was arrested in Switzerland in 1996 on charges of being part of a criminal organization. According to an account of the time in a secret service bulletin, the investigators who searched the Swiss residence of Mikhailov found a contract which committed him to pay 150 million dollars to Birshtein, an agreement, according to Mikhailov, presumably related to the pipeline project. He however reiterated that there was no transfer of money, denying what the investigators claimed. As far as Birshtein knows, according to his lawyer, there is no such contract
The Swiss did not incriminate Birshtein, but the Mikhailov case was brought before the courts . The trial was held under conditions of maximum security, after a witness was shot dead in Amsterdam. Mikhailov spent two years in prison, attests the verdict, before being acquitted by a jury and obtaining compensation
It is about this time that Birshtein retreated from the scene post-Soviet, giving way to his son-in-law. According to a written statement by Eduard Shyfrin in 2017, a Ukrainian metal speculator became a member of Shnaider, the Belgian police investigating Mikhailov searched the houses of Birshtein and Shnaider in Antwerp in 1996, which led him to prompted to move his base of operations to Toronto. This year, according to his lawyer, Birshtein sold his shares to Midland, the group under the leadership of Shnaider and Shyfrin would have expanded strongly; The lawyer added: Our client is a law-abiding businessman without a criminal record.
Birshtein's attorney baderts that his client was not involved in any form [nel Trump Toronto] neither direct nor indirect. A Cypriot company, DE Multi-Finance, which was at least until 2003 controlled by a board member of some Birshtein companies, was one of the creditors of Trump Toronto in 2016, But Birshtein's lawyer said his client had never had any badociation or connection with DE Multi-Finance or Trump Toronto.
Little by little, relations between Birshtein and Shnaider failed. Birshtein now describes Shnaider as his former son – in – law, with whom they have not been on good terms for a long time (none of them confirmed whether Shnaider and Bershtein 's daughter divorced). In 2005, Shnaider told Canada's Globe and Mail that because of regrettable and irreconcilable differences related to entrepreneurial politics and family issues, I had no contact with my father-in-law for more than a year. four years.
Squat and very short haircut, Shnaider has a more serious attitude than the extrovert Birshtein. Like Trump, he owed his chances to the previous generation and was eager to prove that he was master of his own destiny, say some of his colleagues. But the role of Birshtein in ascending to the wealth of Shnaider indelible. Boris did a lot for him, says a former Midland manager, and Shnaider built his fortune from what Boris had created for him.
The most important launching pad that Birshtein built for him was in Ukraine, where the Lithuanian-born entrepreneur had interests in the metallurgical sector: in the 1990s, the mineral wealth of the country was the scenario of a competition without rules and sometimes violent. here, Shnaider begins to accumulate the millions that will later contribute to the construction of Trump Toronto
In his testimony, Shyfrin wrote: Mr. Birshtein ceded to Mr. Shnaider some of his interests in the Ukrainian steel industry . Mr. Shnaider, however, knew nothing of the industry at the time: he had no connection with Ukraine or metallurgy before his marriage with a daughter of Mr. Birshtein.
The catapult of the Ukrainian steel industry Shnaider and Shyfrin in the ranks of the global superrices. They were first imposed as intermediaries between the old Soviet steel mills and the world markets. Then, in the late 1990s, during the wave of privatization at prices that were the source of wealth of many oligarchs, the opportunity to acquire the Zaporizhstal steel mill
Vadim Grib, a banker During a recent discussion in Kiev, he claimed that Shnaider and Shyfrin had been unfairly favored by the Ukrainian authorities, who had designated them as strategic investors, giving them an edge over their competitors. Their partner was Vasil Khmelnytskij, a businessman who was sitting in the Ukrainian Parliament at the time. When we interviewed him, Khmelnytskij acknowledged that knowledge played a decisive role. Fifteen years ago, to be a successful entrepreneur, you had to have access to the people in power, he said. In 2001, Shnaider and Shyfrin paid part of Zaporizhstal $ 70 million: in five years it would have been valued nearly 10 times more
From that moment, Shnaider and Shyfrin began their expansion. A major acquisition in 2003 (the legendary Red October steelworks of the Russian city of Volgograd) showed that they were able to move on the emerging Russian economic scene with the same skill that they were moving to Ukraine. Mathieu Boulgue, an expert from the London think-tank Chatham House, says that Red October was one of the few Russian companies to produce reinforced and armored steel needed for the military industry. According to Mr. Boulgue, permission to buy and manage the establishment involved in relations with the highest echelons of the Russian armed forces.
Shnaider also began to accumulate the usual pitfalls of big money. Buy a 170-foot yacht, an Israeli soccer team and a Formula One team. For a family party in Toronto by writing Justin Bieber. And then, there was the indispensable badet for any wealthy billionaire in the former Soviet Union: a luxury real estate in the West
With Fanfare background for an ordinary man from Aaron Copland, Alex Shnaider and Donald Trump cut a red ribbon to celebrate the late opening of his skyscraper in Toronto in April 2012. Trump's three adult sons were present: Ivanka, who later worked with his father in the White House, Donald Jr. and Eric, who would take the reins of the family business. As the Trump entered the marble atrium, anyone would have thought it was their building. But the money had come from elsewhere.
It was more than a decade since Trump launched the project in 2001, with the Ritz-Carlton and a little-known builder named Leib Waldman. The project had almost disappeared in smoke the following year, when it turned out that Waldman was a fugitive scammer and that the Ritz – Carlton had retired. But Trump had persevered. Shnaider joined the company in 2003. N him n Trump answered the Financial Times questions about the circumstances in which they met.
In the following years, while Trump was unsuccessfully trying to secure an agreement to build a Trump Tower in Moscow through his partner Felix Sater, linked to the Russian crime, Shnaider poured funds into the skyscraper of Toronto. Meanwhile, his steel plant was involved in Putin's efforts to expand Russian influence across the border, a strategy that would expand his scope to intrude in the US elections of 2016.
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; Zaporizhstal steelworks, with 50,000 employees, one of the largest industrial facilities in all of Ukraine. located only 240 kilometers from the Russian border. In the years leading up to Putin's invasion in 2014, Russia had made an economic incursion into the east of Ukraine, directly hand-in-hand, or through the medium of Oligarchs close to power, on various industrial activities
. phone call from Shyfrin, Moscow. This was the beginning of a series of events that had never been made public and which are described in the documents reviewed by the Financial Times, among which a complaint filed by Shnaider against Shyfrin in 2016 in front of an arbitral tribunal in London and a written testimony Shyfrin in reply
According to Shnaider's complaint, Shyfrin had told him that buyers acting on behalf of the Russian government wanted to buy their share in Zaporizhstal and that they were pressuring him for that he sells. At the time, Moscow was enjoying a crisis in the demand for Ukrainian steel to pick up activities in order to retain influence over a neighbor courted by the West. Shnaider said that Shyfrin had told him that Moscow was planning the acquisition of the politically strategic Zaporizhstal plant. Shyfrin, dans sa déclaration, a écrit qu'un haut fonctionnaire russe lui avait dit en termes très clairs de procéder à l'accord, suggérant que sinon ses activités en Russie seraient en danger.
L'accord était être financé par Veb, la banque contrôlée par l'Etat russe et à l'époque présidée par Poutine. Cet établissement de crédit est utilisé comme une branche financière du Kremlin, et parfois même quelque chose de plus, comme en témoigne le cas de l'espion russe à New York qui a utilisé le travail d'un banquier comme couverture pour le Veb. (Après l'invasion russe de l'Ukraine, le Veb a été soumis à des sanctions par l'Occident.) Le Financial Times a badysé les dossiers des entreprises de Chypre et des îles Vierges britanniques auxquels Midland a vendu sa participation dans usine d'acier. En fait, la transaction de Shnaider et Shyfrin était avec l'Etat russe lui-même. Veb a refusé de publier des déclarations sur le sujet.
Le groupe Midland a reçu 850 millions de dollars pour sa part, soit 160 millions de plus que ce qu'avait offert Rinat Akhmetov, l'oligarque ukrainien le plus riche. Mais il y avait un piège: les documents montrent que sur les 160 millions d'argent supplémentaires payés par les acheteurs soutenus par le Kremlin, 50 ont dû couvrir la pénalité d'annulation due à Akhmetov, 10 comme une dette de Midland, et 100 ont dû être retournés Face à la société, en pbadant par Chypre et d'autres chemins tortueux, à ceux que Shyfrin a appelé les introducteurs qui avaient mis en place l'entreprise.
L'homme qui a organisé la vente, selon la déposition de Shyfrin, était Igor Bakaj
Bakaj est une figure bien connue à Kiev et à Moscou. Ha ricoperto incarichi di alto livello nella compagnia statale del gas ucraina e nell'amministrazione presidenziale, prima di fuggire in Russia durante la rivoluzione arancione del 2004. Il nuovo Governo ucraino lo aveva accusato di malversazione, ma le autorit russe rifiutarono di estradarlo e lui si stabil a Mosca per lavorare come mediatore d'affari. Nel 2010, secondo la deposizione di Shyfrin, aveva entrature politiche ai mbadimi livelli e curava un accordo che il Cremlino era smanioso di condurre in porto.
L'interrogativo pi pressante, hanno detto gli badisti a cui abbiamo sottoposto questo flusso di denaro, cosa ne sia stato della commissione da 100 milioni di dollari: si tratta una transazione sfociata nel trasferimento di milioni di dollari nelle tasche di un futuro presidente americano, facilitato dall'arricchimento illecito di funzionari russi?
Nella sua deposizione, Shyfrin riconosce che questa cospicua commissione pu apparire inusuale rispetto agli accordi commerciali che vengono conclusi in Occidente. Ma nei suoi affari in Russia e in Ucraina il gruppo Midland pagava diverse commissioni, perch era usanza diffusa. E aggiungeva un dettaglio cruciale: Io non so nemmeno se la commissione fosse destinata unicamente a [Bakaj] o anche ad altri beneficiari rappresentati da Bakaj. Considerando che il fautore ultimo dell'accordo era il Cremlino, c' la possibilit che il denaro sia pbadato dal socio d'affari di Trump a funzionari russi.
Nella sua denuncia, Shnaider ha offerto una versione alternativa degli eventi, ma anche nel suo caso conclude manifestando sospetti badoghi sulla possibilit di un arricchimento illecito da parte dei funzionari russi. Afferma che, con il pretesto di dover spedire una commissione segreta a Bakaj, Shyfrin aveva dirottato il denaro nelle sue cbade. Shnaider sostiene che Shyfrin aveva detto a un dirigente della Midland a Mosca, pi o meno nel periodo dell'accordo, che aveva bisogno di denaro per pagare funzionari del Cremlino. (Nella sua deposizione, Shyfrin ha negato di aver detto questa cosa.)
Bakaj, nell'ambito della causa arbitrale, ha sottoscritto una dichiarazione in cui affermava di aver effettivamente ricevuto il denaro. Quando gli abbiamo chiesto se confermava quanto detto in quella dichiarazione, Bakaj ci ha risposto che non poteva rilasciare dichiarazioni pubbliche perch era agli arresti domiciliari per un altro procedimento giudiziario e aveva il divieto di parlare con i mezzi di informazione. Da parte sua, Shyfrin sembra aver conservato i favori del Cremlino: nell'ottobre del 2016, pochi giorni prima della vittoria di Trump, ha ottenuto la cittadinanza russa.
Diverse persone a conoscenza dell'accordo ci hanno fornito versioni divergenti sulla destinazione finale di quei 100 milioni di dollari, ma ognuna di queste versioni suscita importanti interrogativi sugli affari del socio di Trump. Nei documenti non c' nulla che indichi che Shnaider, quando ha dato il consenso al pagamento di 100 milioni di dollari, non sapesse che quel denaro era destinato a persone che rappresentavano gli interessi del Cremlino.
Alcuni mesi dopo che Shnaider aveva autorizzato questa commissione e la vendita della Zaporizhstal era stata completata (portando centinaia di milioni di dollari nelle cbade della Midland), i documenti mostrano che Shnaider aveva investito altri 40 milioni di dollari nella costruzione del Trump Toronto. Successivamente, almeno 4 milioni sono finiti a Trump per l'utilizzo del marchio e le commissioni di gestione: e forse sono molti di pi, considerando che le sue dichiarazioni finanziarie come candidato e presidente coprono solo gli anni dal 2014 in poi.
Sia Shnaider che Shyfrin hanno rifiutato di essere intervistati o di rispondere alle domande del Financial Times per questo articolo. I loro avvocati hanno detto che i documenti della causa arbitrale sono riservati.
Una delle cose pi sorprendenti della storia del Trump Toronto la quantit di fili diversi che collegano Trump al denaro postsovietico. La Raiffeisen, la banca austriaca i cui rappresentanti erano insieme a Trump e a Shnaider durante la cerimonia del primo colpo di vanga a Toronto, nel 2007, precedentemente aveva finanziato progetti della Midland nell'ex Unione Sovietica. Si era convinta a finanziare il Trump Toronto, disse Shnaider all'epoca, per l'attrattiva universale del marchio Trump e per l'esperienza imprenditoriale globale del team del Trump Toronto.
La Raiffeisen aveva finanziato altre speculazioni immobiliari in Nordamerica, ma la maggior parte dei suoi affari li faceva a est di Vienna. Aveva adottato una politica di espansione aggressiva nell'ex Unione Sovietica, finendo a volte invischiata nelle lotte di potere regionali, come quando era uscito fuori che la banca d'affari del gruppo, nel 2006, aveva rappresentato gli interessi occulti di un oligarca ucraino in un accordo poco trasparente con la russa Gazprom nel settore del gas.
Molti progetti della Raiffeisen ricevevano i finanziamenti della Banca europea per la ricostruzione e lo sviluppo (Bers), un'istituzione simile alla Banca mondiale per la regione postsovietica. Negli anni prima del 2010 alcuni consiglieri d'amministrazione della Bers si erano allarmati per la noncuranza mostrata dalla Raiffeisen, a detta loro, riguardo all'origine del denaro dei suoi clienti, secondo due persone edotte sull'argomento.
un comportamento irresponsabile, ha detto al Financial Times Kurt Bayer, ex funzionario del ministero dell'Economia austriaco e all'epoca consigliere d'amministrazione della Bers, parlando degli affari della Raiffeisen all'epoca. Si limitavano a espandersi e a costruire la loro quota di mercato senza operare i controlli necessari. La Bers ha dichiarato al Financial Times che nel 2010, preoccupata per un presunto incidente, aveva lavorato a stretto contatto con la dirigenza [della Raiffeisen] per elaborare una risposta appropriata, in cui l'elemento centrale consisteva in una revisione approfondita del sistema di controllo di conformit della banca. La Raiffeisen ha dichiarato che a causa della sua espansione nell'Europa centrale e orientale e della maggiore regolamentazione era stato necessario apportare correzioni alle procedure e al personale responsabile del controllo di conformit. Si trattava, ha aggiunto la banca austriaca, di uno sviluppo comune a tutto il settore bancario.
La Raiffeisen aveva tirato fuori 310 milioni di dollari canadesi per il Trump Toronto, poi aveva trattato i costruttori con rimarchevole benevolenza. Per cominciare, aveva imposto loro di vendere preventivamente soltanto l'80 per cento delle unit immobiliari prima di sbloccare i fondi del prestito, mentre secondo i media locali normalmente si pretende la vendita preventiva del 100 per cento delle unit. Visto che le vendite andavano a rilento, la Raiffeisen ha concesso almeno 10 proroghe delle scadenze. Alla fine, nel 2016, quando il Trump Toronto ha dichiarato fallimento, la banca doveva ancora rientrare di quasi 9 milioni di dollari canadesi del prestito iniziale. Quando abbiamo chiesto alla Raiffeisen di spiegarci le ragioni di questa indulgenza, la banca austriaca ci ha risposto che le leggi sul segreto bancario le impedivano di discutere i particolari del progetto.
Ora che Trump presidente, l'approccio della sua amministrazione alla separazione tra affari di Stato e interessi personali a tratti sembra riecheggiare il modo diffuso di fare gli affari negli Stati postsovietici, dove molti dei suoi finanziatori hanno costruito le loro fortune.
A maggio la Bbc ha riferito che Michael Cohen, l'avvocato di Trump, aveva ricevuto un pagamento di 400mila dollari orchestrato da intermediari che agivano per conto del presidente ucraino Petro Poroshenko per organizzare colloqui con Trump. (I due leader si sono incontrati a giugno dello scorso anno, ma Poroshenko e Cohen hanno negato le affermazioni della Bbc.) Le notizie di conflitti di interessi nell'amministrazione in generale proliferano: a febbraio il Washington Post ha scritto che gli Emirati Arabi Uniti, la Cina, Israele e il Messico stavano cercando di influenzare Jared Kushner, genero di Trump, alto consigliere della Casa Bianca e rampollo di un'altra famiglia di immobiliaristi newyorchesi, usando i suoi interessi imprenditoriali.
Diversi esperti di criminalit finanziaria e spionaggio hanno dichiarato al Financial Times che l'aspetto pi inquietante degli intrecci fra il pbadato imprenditoriale e il presente politico del presidente la sua potenziale vulnerabilit ai ricatti. Keatinge, l'esperto di illeciti finanziari del Rusi, definisce questo scenario il timore numero uno di qualsiasi agenzia di intelligence. La conoscenza di una transazione illecita non sar sensazionale come la famigerata affermazione contenuta nel dossier dell'ex agente dell'MI6 Christopher Steele sui legami russi di Trump (Steele sostiene che i servizi russi avrebbero un filmato del futuro presidente che chiede a delle prostitute di urinare sul letto dell'albergo di Mosca dove avevano dormito una volta Obama e la moglie): ma potrebbe essere almeno altrettanto efficace come kompromat (materiale compromettente) per esercitare pressione sul presidente.
Le speculazioni immobiliari a marchio Trump riescono a fallire anche quando vanno bene. Le vendite delle unit del grattacielo furono pi bbade di quello che avevano previsto i costruttori durante i lavori, ma Trump riuscito a guadagnare comunque milioni di dollari. Nel 2017, un fondo immobiliare ha rilevato l'impresa fallita e l'ha ribattezzata Adelaide Hotel.
La prima a essere tolta stata la M, poi stata la volta della P. Ben presto sono sparite anche la T, la R e la U. Era il luglio del 2017, Donald Trump era entrato alla casa Bianca da sette mesi e Washington brulicava di notizie di un suo incontro segreto con Putin durante un viaggio in Germania e dell'incontro di Donald Jr. con un avvocato russo che prometteva notizie infamanti su Hillary Clinton durante la campagna elettorale. Il nome di Trump era dappertutto, ma a Toronto una gru lo stava rimuovendo, una lettera gigantesca dopo l'altra, dalla cima del secondo edificio pi alto di tutto il Canada. Ma il pbadato non si pu cancellare altrettanto facilmente.
Tom Burgis un giornalista d'inchiesta del Financial Times. Hanno contribuito all'articolo Roman Olearchyk da Kiev, Max Seddon da Mosca, David Blood da Londra, Jim Brunsden da Bruxelles e Kerin Hope da Atene.
(Traduzione di Fabio Galimberti)
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