Someone's Lying About the Money for Trump Tower Moscow
It could be a key link between Trump world and the Kremlin: Trump’s pal says he lined up a sanctioned Russian bank to finance the project. But VTB says that’s completely false.
ANNA NEMTSOVA
BETSY WOODRUFF
SPENCER ACKERMAN
08.31.17 1:00 AM ET
Someone is lying.
Either it’s Felix Sater, President Trump’s felonious old crony, who claimed that a sanctioned Russian bank was ready to finance a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Or it’s representatives of the bank, Russia’s second-largest, who say they never considered providing cash to the project, contradicting Sater’s emailed assertions to his boyhood friend, Trump attorney Michael Cohen, revealed by congressional investigators this week.
At issue is a question central to Bob Mueller’s special counsel probe: Just how closely did Trump associates work with Russian power brokers in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election?
Reports from earlier this week indicate Sater, a convicted felon and former business associate of Trump, claimed in November 2015 he had lined up funding from VTB—a huge Russian bank, 60 percent of whose shares are owned by the Kremlin—for a Trump Organization construction project in Moscow.
If Sater’s claim is true, it could be a key link between Trump world and the Kremlin. But the bank at issue told The Daily Beast it isn’t. The Daily Beast cannot independently determine which side is telling the truth.
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/someones-lying-about-the-money-for-trump-tower-moscow
