A joint investigation by NBC News and Reuters has found that Donald Trump's first international hotel venture, Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama, was infested with dirty money.
At the root of the exposure is a Brazilian real estate salesman named Alexandre Ventura Nogueira who currently is on the run:
Three years after getting involved in the Trump Ocean Club, Nogueira was arrested by Panamanian authorities on charges of fraud and forgery, unrelated to the Trump project. Released on $1.4 million bail, he later fled the country.
He spoke with NBC News about his association with the Trumps while in an undisclosed European city wearing a disguise.
No one in the Trump Organization or family appears to have engaged in any illegal activity or seems to have known about the criminal backgrounds of their associates, but according to legal experts, they should have asked questions:
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.
NBC:
Ventura [Nogueira] isn’t the only person associated with the building who has had run-ins with the law...[T]he project was riddled with brokers, customers and investors who have been linked to drug trafficking and international crime. [Mauricio] Ceballos, [a former financial crimes prosecutor in Panama] who investigated the project, went as far as to call the skyscraper “a vehicle for money laundering.”
...[Ventura] 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.
The Trump Organization has issued a statement distancing itself from liability in general and Ventura Nogueira in particular:
“The Trump Organization was not the owner, developer or seller of the Trump Ocean Club Panama project,” the statement said. “Because of its limited role, the company was not responsible for the financing of the project and had no involvement in the sale of units or the retention of any real estate brokers.”
The statement went on to say that the company has no relationship with Ventura, nor any knowledge of any allegations against him.
However, Ivanka Trump made a promotional video for the property in 2011 and, allegedly, was involved in day-to-day decision-making. "The Trump Organization has to approve everything because of his name on the project,” Ventura Nogueira said. In addition:
Ventura estimates his company, Homes Real Estate Investment & Services, sold 350 to 400 units, about $100 million worth of property. Ventura says he was such an effective salesman that he was invited to a 2008 celebration at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. Ventura provided photographs of himself with Donald Trump at the event, and other photographs of him with Ivanka, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
Read more:
A Panama tower carries Trump’s name and ties to organized crime (NBC News)
Ivanka and the fugitive from Panama (Reuters)
Trump building in Panama tied to Russian mafia, international crime: report (The Hill)