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PANAMA CITY/TORONTO, Nov 17 (Reuters) - In the bounce of 2007, a assumption of foreigners, abounding from Russia, accustomed at Panama City airport to be greeted by a bear who aerated them off in a white Cadillac with a Donald Trump logo on the side.
The auto belonged to a business run by a Brazilian above car salesman declared Alexandre Ventura Nogueira, who was alms the visitors a adventitious to beforehand in Trump’s latest activity – a 70-floor belfry declared the Trump Ocean Club All-embracing Auberge and Tower. It was the approaching U.S. president’s aboriginal all-embracing auberge venture, a circuitous including residential apartments and a coffer in a beach architecture shaped like a sail.
“Mr Nogueira was an approachable and active adolescent man,” remembered Justine Pasek, who was crowned Miss Universe by Donald Trump in 2002 and was acting in 2007 as a abettor for Nogueira’s company, Homes Absolute Acreage Beforehand & Services. “Everybody was so afflicted with Homes as they seemed to be benumbed the top of the absolute acreage bang at the time,” she said.
One of those Nogueira set out to affect was Ivanka, Trump’s daughter. In an annual with Reuters, Nogueira said he met and batten with Ivanka “many times” back she was administration the Trump Organization’s captivation in the Panama development. “She would bethink me,” he said.
Ivanka was so taken with his sales skills, Nogueira said, that she helped him become a arch abettor for the development and he appeared in a video with her announcement the project.
A Reuters assay into the costs of the Trump Ocean Club, in affiliation with the American anchorperson NBC News, begin Nogueira was amenable for amid one-third and one-half of beforehand sales for the project. It additionally begin he did business with a Colombian who was afterwards bedevilled of money bed-making and is now in apprehension in the United States; a Russian abettor in the Trump activity who was confined in Israel in the 1990s for kidnap and threats to kill; and a Ukrainian abettor who was arrested for declared people-smuggling while alive with Nogueira and afterwards bedevilled by a Kiev court.
Three years afterwards accepting complex in the Trump Ocean Club, Nogueira was arrested by Panamanian authorities on accuse of artifice and forgery, altered to the Trump project. Released on $1.4 actor bail, he afterwards fled the country.
He larboard abaft a aisle of bodies who affirmation he cheated them, including over apartments in the Trump project, consistent in at atomic four bent cases that eight years afterwards acquire still to be judged.
Nogueira, 43, denies the accuse and told Reuters in an email: “I am no Angel but not Devil either.”
Ivanka Trump beneath to animadversion on her affairs with Nogueira. A White House abettor referred questions to the Trump Organization. Alan Garten, the organization’s arch acknowledged officer, said: “No one at the Trump Organization, including the Trump family, has any band of anytime affair or speaking with this individual.”
Trump put his name to the development and stood to accomplish up to $75 actor from it, according to a band announcement for the project. He did not apply administration ascendancy over the architecture and was beneath no absolute acknowledged obligation to conduct due activity on added bodies involved.
Still, some acknowledged experts say the adventure raises questions about the accomplish Trump took to assay the antecedent of any assets from there. Arthur Middlemiss, a above abettor commune advocate in Manhattan and a above arch of JPMorgan’s all-around anti-corruption program, said that back Panama was “perceived to be awful corrupt,” anyone affianced in business there should conduct due activity on others complex in their ventures. If they did not, he said, there was a abeyant accident in U.S. law of actuality accountable for axis a aphotic eye to wrongdoing.
Jimmy Gurule, a assistant of law at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and a above under-secretary for administration at the U.S. Treasury Department, agreed. He additionally said any abettor should abstain alive with “anyone with a abeyant articulation to criminality” artlessly as a amount of acceptable ethics.
Reuters could not actuate what due activity Trump agitated out in affiliation to the Ocean Club project.
The White House referred Reuters questions about the Ocean Club development to the Trump Organization. Garten said the Trump Organization’s role in the activity “was at all times apprenticed to licensing its cast and accouterment administration services. As the aggregation was not the buyer or developer, it had no captivation in the auction of any units at the property.”
He said the Trump Organization “never had any acknowledged accord or cogent dealings” with Nogueira.
Nine above business ally or advisers of Nogueira interviewed by Reuters accused him of cheating them and his clients. Two of the nine acquire taken acknowledged activity adjoin Nogueira. The cases acquire yet to be judged.
When aboriginal approached by Reuters, Nogueira beneath to acknowledgment questions. Writing on October 4, he said in an email: “Anything I would say could additionally accident a lot of important and able people. I am not abiding I should do that.”
Later, Nogueira agreed to meet. In a diffuse interview, he declared his contacts with the Trump ancestors and his role in the Ocean Club project. He said he abandoned abstruse afterwards the Ocean Club activity was about complete that some of his ally and investors in the Trump activity were criminals, including some with what he declared as admission to the “Russian mafia.” He said he had not advisedly apple-pie any adulterous money through the Trump project, although he did say he had apple-pie banknote afterwards in added schemes for base Panamanian officials.
It was not his job to assay the antecedent of money that investors acclimated to buy units in the Trump Ocean Club, Nogueira said. “I didn’t apperceive the money was advancing from annihilation illegal. As connected as they were accomplishing wire transfers and not cash, I wasn’t afraid about the antecedent of it.”
Nogueira said that no one asked him about the antecedent of funds. “Nobody anytime asked me. The banks didn’t ask. The developers didn’t ask. The Trump Organization didn’t ask me. Nobody asked me: ‘Who are the customers? Area did the money arise from?’”
It is cryptic how much, if any, apple-pie money went into the Trump project.
Global Witness, an anti-corruption watchdog, says in an independently-produced address out today, that Panama in the 2000s presented accurate challenges for acreage developers because of its afresh acceptability for corruption.
The ultimate sources of banknote for added Trump absolute acreage projects area Trump has accountant his name acquire fatigued assay this year. In March, a Reuters assay begin that at atomic 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses had bought $98.4 actor annual of acreage in seven Trump-branded affluence architecture in southern Florida.
The buyers included politically-connected businessmen and bodies from the additional and third tiers of Russian power. Responding to that story, Garten, the Trump Organization’s counsel, said the assay of Trump’s business ties with Russia was confused and that the adventure was “overblown.”
HIGH LIVING
Donald Trump’s captivation in the Ocean Club began in 2005, back bounded developer Roger Khafif catholic to Trump Belfry in New York to angle the abstraction of a Trump activity in Panama. Khafif said he told the American administrator that Trump would charge abandoned to authorization his name and accommodate auberge management. This way of accomplishing business freed Trump from the accountability of demography a pale or authoritative a claimed guarantee.
In an annual with Reuters, Khafif recalled that Trump capital to use the Panama activity as a “baby” for his babe Ivanka, who had aloof abutting the Trump Organization, to accretion acquaintance in the acreage business.
The plan was for Newland All-embracing Properties Corp, area Khafif was admiral and which endemic the development, to accounts architecture with a band underwritten by Bear Stearns, the U.S. beforehand bank. The bank, which burst in 2008, was acquired by JPMorgan, which beneath to comment.
To advertise the bond, the developer bare to prove it could advertise the apartments. This was area Nogueira came in. The Brazilian had accustomed in Panama in the mid-2000s from Spain, area he had formed as a car salesman.
He had already had a besom with the law. In September 2005, in an official apprehension acquaint on the internet, the Spanish abridgement admiral said it had opened affairs to accomplished Nogueira for an declared “serious violation” of the country’s money-laundering laws. The affairs were concluded about nine months afterwards afterwards admiral could not actuate Nogueira’s whereabouts. The admiral beneath to comment. Nogueira said it was a atomic incident, acquired by him demography too abundant of his own banknote through an airport.
Once in Panama, Nogueira became acclaimed for his friendships with politicians, his adulation of Aston Martin sports cars and big-ticket watches and, as one above accessory recalled, for “never cutting the aforementioned shoes – no amount how big-ticket – for added than three months.”
He said he aboriginal got complex with the Trump Ocean Club activity at an aboriginal sales affair in 2006 in Panama abiding by Khafif, whom he knew already. Ivanka Trump and added absolute acreage brokers were there, he said. He remembered alert as a minimum amount of $120,000 for condominiums was discussed.
Nogueira said he stood up and said the amount was at the akin answerable in accustomed developments. “Here, it is Trump selling. You acquire to accord a amount to that name. Accomplish it $220,000!”
He said Ivanka replied: “Can you advertise it?”
Nogueira said he asked for a anniversary to prove himself. And aural a anniversary he managed to aggregate deposits on over 100 apartments, and afterwards that Khafif fabricated him a arch broker, alive on a 5 percent bureau of gross sales, he said.
Asked about Nogueira’s annual of this meeting, Khafif said that “most of what he said was true.” Khafif said he remembered Nogueira affair Ivanka “a brace of times.”
Nogueira said that in the months that followed he discussed beforehand and sales with Ivanka in Panama, Miami and New York. He said he additionally abutting a accumulation that catholic with Ivanka on a clandestine accountant jet to attending at a abeyant armpit for addition Trump activity in Cartagena, Colombia.
While Donald Trump was not the buyer of the Panama project, the Trump Organization alternate in abounding capacity bottomward to “choosing the appliance and fittings,” said Nogueira. Day-to-day the activity was assigned to Ivanka, he said, adding: “I batten to her a lot of times, a lot of times.” He additionally met Donald Jr. and Eric Trump.
Ivanka Trump did not acknowledge to requests for animadversion about Nogueira. Garten, the Trump Organization’s counsel, declared acquaintance amid Nogueira and the Trumps as “meaningless.” He said such affairs and contest “may acquire been memorable” for Nogueira, but for Ivanka and the blow of the Trump ancestors it would acquire been “just one of actually hundreds of accessible appearances they were asked to accomplish that year.”
Ivanka and Trump’s sons appeared in accessible at barrage contest for the tower, fabricated promotional videos for the activity and managed the Trump involvement.
Nogueira said that one video was commissioned by him. Ivanka helped align admission to Trump Belfry in New York for some sequences. “In this video we made, I was talking and she was talking.”
When the Spanish-language TV approach Univision, in an commodity arise in 2011, aboriginal acclaimed Nogueira’s role in the Trump project, Eric Trump responded that Nogueira had been an detached salesman. “I looked and I’ve never heard the name, nor does it arise in our database. What I begin out was owns a absolute acreage bureau in Panama that sells apartments in our architecture as a third party,” he told the channel.
Asked this ages about Eric Trump’s account in acknowledgment to the Univision report, the Trump Organization said the aggregation never had any ties to Nogueira or acquaintance of him.
Despite actuality a third party, Nogueira and his ally played a above allotment in the Trump project’s success, according to interviews with above key agents at Homes, developers, investors and lawyers, and an assay of Panama accumulated annal and added accessible documents.
Homes accounted for up to bisected of the 666 accommodation sales in beforehand of the band prospectus, bodies complex in the activity told Reuters.
Eleanora Michailov, a Russian who acclimatized in Canada, was Nogueira’s all-embracing sales director. She recalled that Nogueira handled the auction of a third of the building, about 200 apartments. Addition Homes sales agent, Jenny Levy, a about by alliance to the developer, Khafif, said she abandoned awash 30 apartments.
“We awash bisected the building, baby! Homes awash half,” Levy said in a buzz interview. Nogueira said that he and his agents beyond the apple awash amid 350 to 400 accommodation and auberge units.
Khafif, admiral and co-owner of the developer, Newland, said he was borderline of the exact number, but Nogueira had apparently awash up to 300 units. “Everybody was lining up to assignment with him ... During those canicule he was the hottest absolute acreage bureau in town,” he said.
Homes begin a accessible bazaar in Russia. “Russians like to appearance off,” said Khafif, who went on several sales trips to Moscow. “For them, Trump was the Bentley” of absolute acreage brands.
Michailov said investors in the Ocean Club were asked to pay 10 percent up advanced for one of the apartments; she said the boilerplate amount was about $350,000. Buyers had to pay a absolute of 30 percent aural a year, according to the band prospectus, and Homes organized the beforehand by ambience up Panamanian companies for barter to access pre-sales agreements with Khafif’s company, Newland.
In 2006 and 2007, Panama accumulated annal show, at atomic 131 captivation companies with assorted combinations of the words “Trump” and “Ocean” in their name – for example, the Trump Ocean 1806 Beforehand Corp - were registered in Panama for pre-sales deals, and mostly by the Homes group.
In abounding cases the character of the buyers was not clear. Nogueira and added Homes agents complex said Panamanian law at that time imposed no obligation to verify the character of owners.
But listed as administrator of four Trump Ocean beforehand companies was Igor Anopolskiy, who in 2007 was Homes Absolute Estate’s adumbrative in Kiev. Badge annal accompaniment he was arrested in March of that year for doubtable bodies trafficking. Released a year afterwards on bail, he was re-arrested in 2013, and in 2014 a Ukraine cloister handed Anopolskiy a five-year abeyant bastille book with three years acquittal for offenses including bodies smuggling and forgery, altered to the Trump project.
Interviewed in Kiev, Anopolskiy abhorrent the case on badge bribery and denied committing any crime.
It was a Colombian abettor declared David Murcia Guzman who triggered Nogueira’s downfall. Murcia was accusable in November 2008 for money laundering, aboriginal in Colombia and afresh in the United States. Murcia was bedevilled to nine years in bastille in the United States for cabal to acquit biologic money. Afterwards confined six years, he is accepted to be abandoned to Colombia, his attorney, Robert Abreu, said. Colombia’s government said Murcia will serve a 22-year bastille appellation aloft his acknowledgment for offenses including money laundering.
Murcia did not get permission from U.S. authorities to acknowledge to Reuters’ questions.
Within canicule of Murcia’s indictment, the spotlight angry to Nogueira. Roniel Ortiz, a above advocate for both Nogueira and Murcia, said Nogueira had offered to ablution Murcia’s money by affairs apartments on his behalf. Murcia “could not booty his money to a bank,” Ortiz said, so Nogueira “offered to see how he could help.”
Ortiz said he did not apperceive how much, if any, of Murcia’s money was acclimated in the Trump project. Nogueira said Murcia gave him $1 actor to beforehand in Panamanian property, which Nogueira acclimated to pay the drop on up to ten Trump apartments amid added investments. Nogueira added: “He was not a bad guy. I don’t acquire aggregate in those accuse was true.”
In 2013 Nogueira, in conversations secretly recorded by a above business partner, said he had performed money bed-making as a service, affective tens of millions of dollars mainly through contacts in Miami and the Bahamas. “More important than the money from absolute acreage was actuality able to acquit the biologic money – there were abundant beyond amounts involved,” he said in the recording. “When I was in Panama I was consistently bed-making money for added than a dozen companies.”
The recordings were heard by Reuters and accurate by bristles bodies who apperceive Nogueira.
Speaking to Reuters, Nogueira said he could not anamnesis authoritative such claims and denied bed-making banknote through the Trump activity or administration drugs money. He said that later, afterwards his absolute acreage business had burst in 2009, he had been complex in administration banknote from base admiral and politicians, and was complex in base schemes to advertise Panamanian visas.
THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION
In the adventure of Panama’s Trump Ocean Club, a aerial point for abounding of those complex was a warm, clement night in aboriginal 2007.
The ambience was Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s clandestine club in Florida. Spilling out of Lamborghinis and Porsches assimilate the affable carpeting were the sales people, audience and abeyant audience whose accuracy and banknote would accomplish it accessible – aural a ages – to breach arena on the project’s architecture armpit in Panama City.
Entertained with drinks, music and jokes from American TV celebrity Regis Philbin, the guests got to accommodated and accost Trump and his children, Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka. The accident was organized to bless a acknowledged sales attack – and to accost added sales.
The Trump Organization did not animadversion about the party. Philbin told Reuters he couldn’t anamnesis the accident because it was 10 years ago. “I acclimated to be with him [Trump] a lot,” Philbin said. “I was acceptable accompany with him.”
Nogueira said he was at the affair and there met Donald Trump for “the aboriginal and abandoned time.” He recalled: “They alien me and said, ‘That’s the guy affairs Panama,’ and he thanked me. We aloof talked for two or three minutes.”
Besides Nogueira, the guests included bodies complex with the activity as investors or salesmen, some of Russian or above Soviet Union origin. Amid them, in the appointment from Homes and cutting a aphotic suit, was Alexander Altshoul, built-in in Belarus. “Russians like their cast names,” Altshoul told Reuters, acknowledgment why investors were admiring to Trump. “The moment was right, they were speculating. Abounding bodies hoped to get profits.”
Altshoul, who holds Canadian citizenship, was listed on the Homes aggregation website in 2007 as a “partner” and an “owner” of the firm. He became complex in Homes afterwards affective to Panama from Toronto and advance with ancestors and accompany in the Trump project, advantageous deposits on 10 apartments and one auberge unit.
Among his ally in that investment, according to Altshoul and Panamanian accumulated records, was a Muscovite declared Arkady Vodovosov, a about of Altshoul. In 1998, Vodovosov was bedevilled to bristles years in bastille in Israel for kidnap and threats to annihilate and torture, cloister annal state.
Contacted by telephone, Vodovosov said inquiries about his captivation with the Trump activity were nonsense. “We were in Panama for a actual abbreviate time, and got out of there a connected time ago,” he said, crumbling to acknowledgment added questions.
Altshoul abounding the Mar-a-Lago affair with addition Homes partner, Stanislau Kavalenka, recalled bodies who were there. Kavalenka was additionally a Canadian émigré from the above Soviet Union.
At altered times, Altshoul and Kavalenka anniversary faced accusations of accepting admission to organized crime, but the accuse were dropped. In Altshoul’s case, badge in Toronto filed accuse in April 2007, at the time he was announcement the Trump project. He was accused of captivation in a mortgage artifice scheme, altered to the Panama project, that complex sending funds through Latvia. The bent case was alone a year later.
In a statement, the Canadian government said it was “duty apprenticed to abjure accuse area there is no reasonable anticipation of confidence or if it is not in the accessible absorption to proceed.” It did not busy added on the case. Altshoul said the accommodation showed he was innocent.
In 2004, Canadian prosecutors had accused Kavalenka of pimping and kidnapping Russian prostitutes. That case was alone in 2005 afterwards the declared prostitutes, who were the capital witnesses, did not appearance up in court. Kavalenka’s abode are unknown. He did not acknowledge to questions about his role in the Trump activity beatific to him through his ancestors in Canada.
Nogueira said Altshoul and Kavalenka had abutting Homes together, aboriginal as barter and afterwards as partners. Altshoul told him he had had some difficulties “but they were solved, and it wasn’t my problem,” Nogueira said. Nogueira additionally said that afterwards he apprehend of Kavalenka’s Toronto case on Google, Kavalenka told him: “I was active some girls. That’s how I fabricated money. But I was cleared.”
SOLD “LIKE HOT CAKES”
In the months afterwards the Mar-a-Lago party, the affairs for anybody complex in the Trump Ocean Club looked rosy. In the bosom of a all-around acreage bang and a acknowledged pitch, sales had exceeded all expectations.
A band announcement was issued in November 2007, enabling the adopting of architecture funds. By the end of June that year, the announcement declared, the activity had “pre-sold about 64 percent of the building’s abode and bartering units,” guaranteeing receipts on achievement of the activity of at atomic $278.7 million.
Trump said later, in a promotional video advanced of the 2011 opening, that the activity awash “like hot cakes.”
But not all the money calm in the pre-sales attack would go on to armamentarium the project. Nine above business ally or advisers of Nogueira interviewed by Reuters declared that, at the Ocean Club and at added developments, Nogueira either bootless to canyon on all the deposits he calm to the project’s developers, or sometimes awash the aforementioned accommodation to added than one client, with the aftereffect that, on achievement of the project, some audience had no bright affirmation on a property.
Exactly how abounding apartments were double-sold is unknown. Michailov said up to 10 out of 80 apartments in the Trump belfry that she had awash were additionally awash by Nogueira to others. Lawsuits in Panama and abstracted accounting complaints apparent by Reuters almanac at atomic six instances of declared artifice by Nogueira, in the Trump activity and in added Panama architecture projects. Two of the complaints apparent by Reuters were in the “Panama Papers,” abstracts from a bounded law close that were leaked to the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the All-embracing Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Ortiz, the above advocate for Murcia and Nogueira, said of the Trump-branded project: “When the architecture was completed and bodies accustomed to seek out their apartments, they ran into anniversary added - two, three bodies who were angry for the aforementioned apartment.”
Complaints adjoin Nogueira, including allegations of artifice in Trump Ocean Club sales, resulted in four bent cases adjoin him in Panama and culminated in his arrest on artifice accuse in May 2009.
Nogueira said double-sales occurred because of changes in the architecture blueprint or accounting error. He said he never advisedly awash an accommodation twice. He said that not anybody absent money from their investments, and best who did absent out because of poor or afflicted beforehand decisions. “If you are attractive to accomplish accessible money from belief afresh you acquire to acquire there is a risk,” he said.
Released on band for $1.4 million, he connected to alive in Panama until 2012 when, admitting a ban on abrogation the country, he fled to his built-in country, Brazil, afore affective on again. Karen Kahn, a federal prosecutor based in Sao Paulo, said Nogueira is beneath a federal assay for all-embracing money laundering, an analysis triggered by several ample coffer transfers that accustomed in his accounts from Panama.
Declining to acknowledge area he is active now, Nogueira agreed to accommodated Reuters and NBC News on November 13 at a aloof location, on action it would not be revealed. Nogueira said an arrest accreditation was outstanding adjoin him in Panama. “Of advance appropriate now, I can be advised by the amends arrangement to be fugitive. But there are two abandon to everything.”
It wasn’t abandoned declared artifice that amount investors. Afterwards the all-around acreage blast of 2008, any adventitious of quick accumulation on the Trump Panama adventure vanished.
By the time the Trump Ocean Club activity was complete in 2011, abounding investors had aloof and absent their deposits rather than butt up the 70 percent balance. Band holders lost, too, afterwards Khafif’s company, Newland, defaulted on payments and the band was restructured.
There was one being who still profited: Donald Trump.
Whatever the losses investors ability suffer, beneath Trump’s licensing deal, abundant originally in the band prospectus, the approaching U.S. admiral was affirmed to accept payment. Cloister annal from Newland’s defalcation in 2013 announce Trump agreed to abate his fee, but that he still becoming amid $30 actor and $50 actor from lending his name to the project.
(By Ned Parker, Stephen Grey, Stefanie Eschenbacher, Roman Anin, Brad Brooks and Christine Murray. Ned Parker appear in New York and Toronto; Stephen Grey in London; Stefanie Eschenbacher and Christine Murray in Panama City; Brad Brooks in Americana, Brazil)
(Additional advertisement by Nathan Layne in New York and Toronto, Elida Moreno in Panama City, Angus Berwick in Madrid, Tom Bergin in London and Denis Dyomkin and Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto. This adventure was appear in affiliation with the Organized Abomination and Bribery Advertisement Network (OCCRP), a non-profit journalism group: Roman Anin in Moscow and Tel Aviv, and Anna Babinets and Elena Loginova in Kiev)
(editing by Richard Woods and Janet McBride)
