Trump defaulted on his Puerto Rico golf course, leaving the territory a $33 million debt [View all]
Long before Hurricanes Irma or María decimated much of Puerto Rico, the island was already in trouble. Earlier this year, faced with $123 billion in debt (and growing), the U.S. territory took the unprecedented step of essentially declaring bankruptcy.
Trump made it clear that he had little interest in helping Puerto Rico’s debt situation, tweeting on April 27 that "Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO!"
But according to PolitiFact Florida, Trump only exacerbated the problem.
The Trump International Golf Club Puerto Rico, which, according to Fortune, borrowed $26.4 million in government-backed bonds in order to pay for improvements, later defaulted on a $119,814 bondholder payment. In 2015, the club filed for bankruptcy, which is when Trump (who licensed his name to the property) desperately tried to distance himself from the place bearing his name.
“We have zero financial investment in this course,” Eric Trump told Bloomberg News in July 2015. “This has absolutely nothing to do with Trump. This is a separate owner. We purely manage the golf course.”
Except that Trump, according to BuzzFeed News, did pocket the hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees from the resort. And when the club defaulted on those bonds and declared bankruptcy, it left Puerto Rico taxpayers with a hefty $32.7 million bill to pay in order to clean up the soon-to-be-president’s mess.
At: https://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/346335/trump-golf-course-puerto-rico-default-33-million-tax-debt/?utm_source=share-fb&utm_medium=button
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