Russian State-Run Bank Financed Trump Hotel In Toronto
Another major financial connection between Trump and Russia.
U.S. authorities are investigating ties between Donald Trump and Russian financial institutions as part of their investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. And a new report published Wednesday adds yet another piece of evidence in the Trump-Russia investigation.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, a Rusian state-run bank helped finance one of Donald Trump’s recent hotel projects.
The Russian bank known as VEB, which has come under scrutiny by U.S. investigators, “financed a deal involving Donald Trump’s onetime partner in a Toronto hotel tower at a key moment for the project,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
One of Trump’s partners on the project, Alexander Shnaider, a Russian-Canadian developer, provided a much needed cashing injection into the project “after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from a separate asset sale that involved the Russian bank.”
The Russian bank whose full name is Vnesheconombank is currently under sanctions by the United States.
In 2010, Trump’s partner Mr. Shnaider sold his stake in a Ukrainian steelmaker for about $850 million to “an entity acting for the Russian government.” And according to the Wall Street Journal report, the Russian state-owned bank initiated the purchase and provided the money for the deal.
“VEB has long been viewed by Russian analysts as a vehicle for the Russian government to fund politically important projects, including the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. A VEB executive in New York was sentenced to prison last year after pleading guilty to conspiring to act in the U.S. as a Russian agent without notifying U.S. authorities,” the report noted.
And guess who was on the board of this Russian bank when it made the deal with Trump’s partner Alexander Shnaider? Yup, Vladimir Putin.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Russian President Vladimir Putin was chairman of VEB’s supervisory board, and major deals would have been approved by him.”
The chairman of this same Russian state-run bank was recently in the news when it was reported that he met with Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in December.
