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Also see: Ivanka Trump; Alan Garten; finance; money laundering; Russia; business;
Jump to: 2017; 2018; 2019; 2020;
Undated: The JW Marriott Panama (formerly The Bahia Grand Panama, before that Trump International Hotel & Tower Panama, and before that Trump Ocean Club) is a 70-storey, 2,710,000 sq ft (252,000 m2), mixed-use waterfront hotel and condominium tower development in Panama City, Panama, in the area of Punta Pacífica. It opened in 2011 as the first international "named branded development" of The Trump Organization. At 70 stories, it is the tallest building in Panama[2] and the tallest building in Central America. [3]
Donald Trump arranged financing for the project from the investment bank Bear Stearns - a $230 million bond offering[11] - for which he received a $2.2 million commission.[10][12] During the financing, Ivanka Trump falsely claimed that over 90% of the units had been sold, and that their sale price was five times that of comparable units.[10][13] Ivanka Trump also exaggerated demand for the units, claiming in 2009 they were selling out even as potential buyers were being offered substantial discounts.[10][14] During the development, Donald Trump falsely implied that the Trump Organization had a financial stake in the project, and that it was acting as the developer, neither of which were true.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JW_Marriott_Panama
-- 2017 --
Undated 2017: Narco-a-lago: Money Laundering at the Trump Ocean Club, Panama ...
In the early 2000s, a series of bankruptcies meant Donald J. Trump was shunned by most lenders. Struggling for credit, he started selling his name to high-end real estate projects. This report examines in detail the criminal connections that propelled one such project – the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama – and how this case bears some of the same disturbing hallmarks as other Trump developments.
Since he became President of the United States, numerous investigations and articles have probed Trump’s business dealings and his alleged links to criminals and other shadowy characters. It is understood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation under the Department of Justice will also examine his real estate business. This is important because it seems likely that, following his various bankruptcies, at least a part of Trump’s business empire has been built on untraceable funds, some apparently linked to Russian criminal networks.
Trump may not have deliberately set out to facilitate criminal activity in his business dealings. But, as this Global Witness investigation shows, licensing his brand to the luxurious Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama aligned Trump’s financial interests with those of crooks looking to launder ill-gotten gains. Trump seems to have done little to nothing to prevent this. What is clear is that proceeds from Colombian cartels’ narcotics trafficking were laundered through the Trump Ocean Club and that Donald Trump was one of the beneficiaries.
https://www.globalwitness.org/sv/campaigns/corruption-and-money-laundering/narco-a-lago-panama/?accessible=true
June 14: Trump’s Conflicts of Interest in Panama
In 2006, Donald Trump signed a contract with developer Roger Khafif to develop a $400 million Trump-branded club called Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower Panama, which includes a 70-story hotel, luxury condos, restaurants, and a casino.
When the hotel complex opened in July 2011, it was the tallest building in Latin America. Just a few months after the opening, however, Khafif’s company, Newland International Properties Corp., defaulted on its bond debt, and in 2013, the company filed for bankruptcy. The property remains open, however, and the Trump Organization still receives revenue for it. According to an Associated Press analysis of court filings, while the bankruptcy affected Trump’s licensing fees, his payout was between $32 million and $55 million. The Associated Press noted that Trump was “the only party to the original deal to come out ahead.” The deal for the club is a licensing and management agreement in which Trump provides the use of his name for the property and in which he previously managed it in exchange for royalties and management fees.
According to The Washington Post’s reporting, Trump Organization Chief Legal Officer Alan Garten “acknowledged that developers of Trump projects have gone to Russia to sell and that the market there, like others around the world, have been fertile territory for the brand.”
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/news/2017/06/14/433947/trumps-conflicts-interest-panama/
November 17: Is Trump Ocean Club in Panama a magnet for dirty money?
https://www.today.com/video/is-trump-ocean-club-in-panama-a-magnet-for-dirty-money-1098048579525
November 17: In the spring of 2007, a succession of foreigners, many from Russia, arrived at Panama City airport to be greeted by a chauffeur who whisked them off in a white Cadillac with a Donald Trump logo on the side.
The limousine belonged to a business run by a Brazilian former car salesman named Alexandre Ventura Nogueira, who was offering the visitors a chance to invest in Trump’s latest project – a 70-floor tower called the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower. It was the future U.S. president’s first international hotel venture, a complex including residential apartments and a casino in a waterfront building shaped like a sail.
A Reuters investigation into the financing of the Trump Ocean Club, in conjunction with the American broadcaster NBC News, found Nogueira was responsible for between one-third and one-half of advance sales for the project. It also found he did business with a Colombian who was later convicted of money laundering and is now in detention in the United States; a Russian investor in the Trump project who was jailed in Israel in the 1990s for kidnap and threats to kill; and a Ukrainian investor who was arrested for alleged people-smuggling while working with Nogueira and later convicted by a Kiev court.
... some legal experts say the episode raises questions about the steps Trump took to check the source of any income from there. Arthur Middlemiss, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a former head of JPMorgan’s global anti-corruption program, said that since Panama was “perceived to be highly corrupt,” anyone engaged in business there should conduct due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they did not, he said, there was a potential risk in U.S. law of being liable for turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-panama/
-- 2018 --
January 12: U.S. Ambassador to Panama John Feeley, a career diplomat and former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, has resigned, saying he no longer felt able to serve President Donald Trump.
Feeley’s departure had been communicated to State Department officials on Dec. 27 and was not a response to Trump’s alleged use of the word “shithole” to describe Haiti and African countries at a meeting on Thursday, U.S. officials said.
Feeley, one of the department’s Latin America specialists and among its senior most officers, made clear that he had come to a place where he no longer felt able to serve under Trump.
“As a junior foreign service officer, I signed an oath to serve faithfully the president and his administration in an apolitical fashion, even when I might not agree with certain policies,” Feeley said, according to an excerpt of a resignation letter read to Reuters on Friday.
“My instructors made clear that if I believed I could not do that, I would be honor bound to resign. That time has come.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-diplomacy-panama-idUSKBN1F1227
February 28: Armed authorities enter Trump hotel in Panama amid standoff over legal dispute
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/28/politics/panama-trump-hotel-raid/index.html
March 6: Panama court evicts Trump management from hotel in bitter spat
A few hours after a worker removed the Trump name from the property, the Trump Organization said in a statement that a Panamanian court had ordered the appointment of a temporary third-party administrator to manage the hotel, adding that it believes no final legal determination has been made.
The Trump Organization also said it was “fully confident” it would ultimately prevail in the legal battle.
The bitter dispute surrounding the Trump-branded hotel has shone a fresh light on the business dealings of the U.S. president across the world. Various Trump-branded properties have dropped the name since the president took office last year.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/06/panama-court-evicts-trump-management-from-hotel-in-bitter-spat.html
April 29: Trump’s company is now threatening the president of Panama
The Trump Organization demanded that he intervene in a private business dispute — or pay the consequences.
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/4/9/17216636/trump-hotel-panama-president-organization-conflict-interest
June 27: Former Trump Hotel in Panama Will Be Branded as a JW Marriott
The sail-shaped tower will be managed by Marriott International Inc. as a JW Marriott hotel, according to a statement from owner Ithaca Capital. The Miami-based firm, led by managing partner Orestes Fintiklis, took control of the property from the Trump Organization in March after a struggle that included court cases in the U.S. and Panama and the use of a crowbar to strip Trump’s name off the building.
Lawyers for the Trump Organization had asked the president of Panama to intervene in the dispute. ... The owners of former Trump hotels in New York and Toronto also have rebranded their properties to distance themselves from U.S. President Donald Trump.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-27/former-trump-hotel-in-panama-will-be-branded-as-a-jw-marriott
September 6: With music and fanfare, US hotel chain Marriott on Tuesday took over a hotel in Panama City mired for months in a legal spat with the Trump Organization.
"Marriott International takes control as of today, managing the building in all aspects," Demetrio Maduro, general manager of the new JW Marriot Panama City, told reporters.
Until recently, the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel was located in the building, managed by the US president's property company, the Trump Organization -- now run by his sons.
But last year, the hotel and most of the apartments in the tower were bought by Miami-based Cypriot businessman Orestes Fintiklis, who in March evicted the Trump Organization before its management contract had ended.
Blaming the Trump name for a drop in business, he expelled the management company from the building and removed the president's name from the front of the luxury 72-floor high rise, triggering a flurry of retaliatory legal action.
The Trump firm has launched legal proceedings to regain control of the hotel, which cuts a distinctive sail-shaped figure among the towers crowding the capital city.
https://www.france24.com/en/20180926-marriott-takes-control-panama-trump-tower-after-long-dispute
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-- 2020 --
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