March 26, 2019
THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:
Sater Eyed Trump Moscow Tower to Launder Cash, BTA Bank Says (Erik Larson, March 25, 2019, Bloomberg)
New York developer Felix Sater is due to testify in Congress this week about his role in Donald Trump's attempt to build a luxury tower in Moscow. A lawsuit filed Monday may provide new fodder for his inquisitors, with its claim that Sater, a longtime associate of Trump's, sought to use money stolen from a bank in Kazakhstan to help develop the building.The suit by BTA Bank JSC alleges that Sater and the wealthy Kazakh businessman Ilyas Khrapunov explored financing the tower deal in 2012 with some of the $4 billion stolen a decade ago by Khrapunov's father-in-law, ex-BTA Chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov. While the Moscow plan fizzled, other transactions tied to Sater helped launder the purloined cash, the bank says."Sater helped Ablyazov, Khrapunov and others launder tens of millions of dollars in those stolen funds into the United States," according to the complaint filed Monday in Manhattan federal court. "Sater also tried to help them stash some of the stolen money overseas, including in real estate in Moscow." [...]"Sater not only met with Ilyas Khrapunov in Trump Tower to discuss laundering the stolen funds, but he also personally arranged meetings between Ilyas and Donald J. Trump to discuss possible investments," the bank's lawyer, Matthew L. Schwartz of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, said in the complaint.
It's a RICO case.
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 26, 2019 4:00 AM