The Trump administration has just announced plans to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRG) as a terrorist group.
What the announcement failed to mention was that this newly-designated terrorist group was involved in the financing for a Trump Hotel project in the country of Azerbaijan.
The link between the Trump Tower Baku project and money-laundering activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was previously reported in The New Yorker.
Ivanka Trump was extremely involved in developing the hotel, working closely with a corrupt operation run by an Azerbaijan crime family known as “the Corleones of the Caspian.”
The Mammadov family has a reputation for using their government positions to enrich themselves and their partners — which includes construction firms tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
That close involvement may open up both Ivanka and the Trump Organization to criminal prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) which prohibits American companies from rewarding corrupt foreign officials.
The Trump Organization’s legal counsel said that the Organization should be exempt from prosecution because Trump’s company didn’t control the project and didn’t pay money to anyone.
However, a legal expert who specializes in the foreign corruption law dismissed those claims.
“You can’t go into business deals in Azerbaijan assuming that you are immune from the FCPA, nor can you escape liability by looking the other way,” said Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School. “The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag — the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”
The New Yorker reported that Trump complained about the law during a phone-in appearance on CNBC in May 2012, the month before the Baku deal was completed.
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do,” Trump said. “It’s a horrible law and it should be changed.”
He complained that American companies that refuse bribe foreign officials would “do business nowhere.” And The New Yorker article reported that there were duffel bags of cash changing hands during construction of the Trump Tower Baku project.
“There is one answer — go to your room, close the door, go to sleep and don’t do any deals, because that’s the only way,” Trump whined to CNBC at the time. “The only way you’re going to do it is the other way.”
The point of this story is that Donald and Ivanka Trump were partners with a terrorist group in a corrupt real estate deal that included money-laundering. In fact, there is evidence that the laundered money was used to acquire weapons that were used in terrorism.
In designating his former business partners as terrorists, Trump issued the following statement:
“This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the Iran Revolutionary Guard actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
Donald Trump has admitted that the IRG is involved with such crimes as drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad and money laundering.
What he has not admitted — and what should be highly publicized — is that Trump himself was a partner with the IRG and therefore was probably an accomplice in helping them commit some of these crimes, including terrorism.
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