malaise (166,727 posts)
It will be Money Laundering ...
I think I may have found to what mal was obscurely alluding:
That BuzzFeed Story on Trump Condos and Money Laundering Is Garbage Partisan SpinIt’s How to Get Clicks 101: write a story that slams Donald Trump and brand it “investigative journalism.” BuzzFeed, the premier “do it to get clicks” Web site, followed the mold this month with a piece designed to suggest that Donald Trump sells condos to money launderers. Except that the piece actually proves something like the opposite of what it purports to show. If anything, the piece shows that Trump doesn’t sell condos to money launderers any more than any other seller of luxury condos.
...
The breathless headline of the piece is Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers. The deck headline reads: “A BuzzFeed News review of every sale of a Trump-branded condominium in the United States provides the first comprehensive look at how many went to unidentified buyers who paid cash, an indication of possible money laundering.” The opening is dramatic and sounds meaningful:
More than one-fifth of Donald Trump’s US condominiums have been purchased since the 1980s in secretive, all-cash transactions that enable buyers to avoid legal scrutiny by shielding their finances and identities, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found.
...
Those two characteristics signal that a buyer may be laundering money, the Treasury Department has said in a series of statements since 2016.
A gotcha? Ummmmm, no. Buried at CYA depth in Buzzfeed's article:
The property records analyzed by BuzzFeed News would not by themselves reveal money laundering – only warning signs. And Trump is not unique in selling condos to cash-paying shell companies. BuzzFeed News examined non-Trump buildings in Manhattan and South Florida and found that roughly the same percentage of units were sold to shell companies in all-cash transactions as in Trump buildings.
IOW, Trump's sales are no different from those of others selling into the same marketplaces. Further, while cash sales to "shell companies" (no public records revealing the actual purchasers) would suit money launderers, they would also suit the legitimate interests of:
* Big legitimate business people who don't want to be subject to harassment or kidnappings-for-ransom;
* Celebrities who want to vacation in peace and without harassment or kidnappings-for-ransom.