A lengthy new investigative story in the New Yorker reveals that Donald Trump and his Trump Organization helped build a hotel in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, a project that the magazine says appears to be a corrupt operation, Trumps worst deal ever and possibly a conduit for illegal activity by Irans Revolutionary Guard.
The 33-story luxury Trump International Hotel and Tower Baku, which never opened, was engineered by oligarchs, reporter Adam Davidson writes. It potentially violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and may have enabled money-laundering and other illegal activities undertaken by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
The U.S. government has regularly accused the Guard of criminal activity, including drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad, and money laundering, Davidson added.
And while an attorney for the Trump Organization said that the president only played a passive role in the development of the property merely a licensor who would allow his famous named to be slapped onto it Davidson found, among other things, that daughter Ivanka Trump was a key player in moving the hotel project along. In fact, in her own words, she oversaw the project since its inception.
She was the most senior Trump organization official on the project, Davidson reported. One executive at a London-based construction firm involved in the project said he met with Ivanka on the project in Baku and New York and said she had very strong feelings, not just about the design but about the back of the hotel landscaping, everything.
An Azerbaijani lawyer who worked on the project, and who said the Trump Org
