© 2017, Laughing Cherub
by M. E. Raines
Cyprus plays a key role in the Trump-Russia connections. It is well known as a place where Russians launder their money. Estimates of the money Russians have invested in Cyprus range from between 8.5 to 37 billion dollars. Bored yet? Read on. It gets better and better, I promise!
Now turn to Deutsche Bank (in Germany). DEUTSCHE BANK IS DONALD TRUMP’S LARGEST CREDITOR—meaning that’s who Trump owes the most money to. This is because they are one of the only banks that would lend money to him; others thought him too much of a risk.
Deutsche Bank was found guilty of Russian money-laundering and in January 2017 was fined $10 billion dollars.
Rather than going to jail, Deutsche Bank’s chief executive, Josef Ackerman—a man who obviously has close ties both to Russia and to Donald Trump—was recruited to become chairman of the Bank of Cyprus. You remember Cyprus, right?
Guess who recruited him? Our own Wilbur Ross, recently confirmed as Trump’s Commerce Secretary of the USA! Wilbur Ross, it turns out, has been the vice-chairman of the bank of Cyprus since 2014. His former co-chairman, Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, had been a KBG agent and was reported to have been appointed to his bank position by Vladimir Putin. Another big investor in the Bank of Cyprus is Russian Viktor Vekselberg, long connected to Russian president Putin.
And another is the Secretary of Commerce of the USA. Ross and his group have invested millions of dollars in the Bank of Cyprus, and they had an 18% interest in it. He is supposed to divest himself of interest in the bank within 90 days of assuming his new position. (Ross is known by some as what is called a “vulture capitalist.” He is a billionaire who has not made his money by being kind.)
Wait. The ties involving Trump will get stranger...and more frightening.
One of the richest men in the world is Russian Dmitry Rybolovlev, nicknamed “The King of Fertilizer.” This guy owns a French soccer team. New York City’s most expensive apartment, an $88 million 10-room penthouse overlooking Central Park, was bought by him for his college-aged daughter. He owns the Greek Island where Jackie Kennedy married Onassis. He is apparently not a nice guy; he sometimes wears a bulletproof vest because of his enemies, and was in prison for a year on a murder charge (although he was cleared).
And guess what? He has owned nearly a 10% share in—wait for it—the Bank of Cyprus!
Put him on hold. He comes back into the story soon. In 2004, Trump bought a garish mansion in Palm Beach for $40 million at a foreclosure auction when the man who had built it, Abraham Gosman, went bankrupt. Trump never lived in it. He only bought it to flip, and put it back up for sale in 2006 for $125 million. Nobody wanted it.
A reporter, Jose Lambiet, had a tour of the house when it was put up by Trump for sale. “I’d been in the house before, at one of Gosman’s charity parties, and Trump had hardly changed anything, just put on a couple of coats of paint,” Lambiet said. “Even that — well, he told us the fixtures in one of the bathrooms were gold, but as he walked away, I scratched a faucet with my fingernails and it was just gold-covered paint. …It was just terrible-looking, really gaudy. Nothing fit together—it was sort of haphazard inside.” The house also had serious mold problems.
Nobody was interested in buying this sham of a mansion and it continued to sit empty. Finally, in 2008, Rybolovlev (the rich Russian) bought it for $95-$100 million, netting Trump a profit of nearly 60 million dollars. This was at the time the biggest real estate profit ever made in the USA. It was also the year of Trump’s 6th and largest bankruptcy.
At the time that Trump made such a huge profit, the real estate market in the USA was, in Trump’s own words, a disaster. Because it was in such a decline, Trump—again, at about the same time that he was making his $100 million sale—had the gall to SUE Deutsche Bank so that he wouldn’t have to pay a $40 million real-estate loan from them. (His lawsuit was unsuccessful.)(And people wonder why no banks want to lend him money!)
With no firm records of either man ever setting foot in the mansion more than once, much less living there, and so much money exchanging hands, there is a lot of suspicion surrounding this deal. It doesn’t make sense.
Trump is even quoted as saying at one time that all he did to fix up the mansion was put some paint on it before he re-sold it, replete with its mold issues, for more than double what he had paid for it, which is peculiar at a time when the real estate market in the USA was in terrible shape. Why didn't he work harder to improve it?
Possibly due to a messy divorce, Rybolovlev finally decided to sell the property in 2015. He has since torn down the mansion, as well as over 97 trees on the land, nice guy that he is, and divided the six acres into three oceanfront lots. It is not known whether or not he will recoup his investment, but if he does, speculation is that at best, he will break even.
Trump claims that he has never met Rybolovlev in person.
BUT…throughout this past year, they have been in the same places simultaneously numerous times! Total coincidence? Rybolovlev “coincidentally” flew in his private jet to Concord, North Carolina at the same time as Trump--one week before the election. Trump’s and Rybolovlev’s private jets were parked side by side at the airport.
In another coincidence, Rybolovlev just happened to fly to West Palm Beach at exactly the same time that Trump and Flynn (the former secretary of state who resigned due to his Russian connections) were there meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister.
In the past year, these coincidental trips of Rybolovlev that overlap Trump’s visits to the same places have included at least seven visits to NYC and two trips to Miami. Rybolovlev, whose home is in Monaco, has also flown to Moscow either right before or immediately after being in New York and Miami at the same time as Trump.
Some suspect Rybolovlev of being some kind of agent for Trump’s financial connections to Russia. Or worse.
Trump’s three oldest children, by the way, have made 13 separate business trips to Russia over a period of 18 months.
Go back now to the beginning. Trump owes a lot of money, and the most he owes is to Deutchebank, found guilty of laundering Russian money. Deutchebank's CEO became head of the Bank of Cyprus due to Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Secretary of Commerce. Wilbur Ross was vice chairman of the bank, along with a former KBG agent. Along with Ross, a major shareholder in the bank is Rybolovlev, who bought a house from Trump at a ridiculously inflated price, as well as other close allies of Putin.
There are many details that have been left out of this story. Most of them involve complex but well documented financial reports. Another less complex anecdote concerns Ross buying and wearing custom-made $500 slippers embroidered with the logo of the Department of Commerce to a recent Trump speech. Wearing slippers to your first important USA political event? Okay. This story does not even address the complex and suspicious relationship between Trump and Russia’s oil company, or Trump's other overly Russia-friendly cabinet members.
Disclaimer: More than 15 legitimate news sources were researched to write this story. Please understand that, unlike newspapers, I have no fact-checking editor to prowl through the details. While I did the most careful and accurate job I could, I do not have the resources to spend long hours on the phone, on foot, or sending emails, which real journalists do; thus, this report may contain some inaccuracies
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