According to McClatchy, President Trump's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen made some real estate deals a few years ago that could raise suspicion:
In 2014, a mysterious buyer using a limited liability company that hid the purchaser’s identity paid $10 million in cash for a small apartment building on New York’s lower east side that Cohen had purchased just three years before for $2 million. The handsome appreciation came despite the fact that the assessed value of the property, at 172 Rivington St., hardly budged in these years, hovering around the price Cohen paid for it.
Three other properties Cohen bought and sold in roughly the same time frame followed a similar pattern. Each was purchased by a different LLC, but were tied together by the fact that a lawyer, Herbert Chaves, served as the LLCs’ manager.
Cohen met with the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors on Tuesday and the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday but about different issues:
The investigations have been digging into Cohen’s role in the abortive effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow that occurred in late 2015 and early 2016 during the campaign, undercutting Trump’s statements about not having any business dealings with Russia. The probes are also looking at Cohen’s part earlier this year in working with a controversial Ukrainian legislator to push a short-lived, pro-Moscow “peace plan” between the two countries, an effort about which Cohen has offered conflicting accounts.
Cohen is also expected to face tough questions about allegations in a dossier compiled last year by an ex-British spy that he attended a secret meeting in Prague in late summer 2016 with some computer hackers and Russian operatives.
Cohen has vehemently denied that he was in Prague last summer or met with Russians. “The #Russian dossier is WRONG!” Cohen has tweeted.
A money laundering expert explains why Cohen's real estate deals are worth a closer look too:
“[W]hat should raise red flags among money laundering experts are purchases way above the assessed value, combined with all cash purchases. These are potential fingerprints of money laundering,” said Louise Shelley, a professor at George Mason University and a specialist in money laundering, “But one needs to carefully investigate these patterns of behavior which, although they arouse suspicions, could be explained by market opportunities.”
Full story: Trump associate Cohen sold four NY buildings for cash to mysterious buyers (McClatchy)