WSJ: Toronto Hotel Deal Now Part Of Probe Into Trump Ties To Russia
For the first time, President Donald Trump’s Canadian real estate dealings have been identified as another area of interest for U.S. federal investigators probing ties between Russia and Trump and his associates.
The connections between the Toronto deal and Russia are indirect and opaque but investigators appear to be zeroing in on the hundreds of millions of dollars Trump’s former business partner received from a Russian-state bank shortly before he put money into the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto, according to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report.
The Journal reported that Russian-Canadian developer Alexander Shnaider received $850 million from Vnesheconombank in 2010 for selling his company’s share in a Ukrainian steelmaker. Russian President Vladimir Putin was chairman of the bank’s supervisory board at the time, and would have approved these sorts of high-level deals, according to the report.
According to the Journal:
After Mr. Shnaider and his partner sold their stake in the steelmaker, Mr. Shnaider injected more money into the Trump Toronto project, which was financially troubled. Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer, Symon Zucker, said in an April interview that about $15 million from the asset sale went into the Trump Toronto project. A day later, he wrote in an email: “I am not able to confirm that any funds” from the deal “went into the Toronto project.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/wsj-trump-toronto-hotel-vnesheconombank-federal-investigators
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