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NCTraveler

(30,481 posts) Wed Mar 28, 2018, 01:29 PM Mar 2018

TrumpORG: a magnet for dirty businessmen

Many of the organization’s international partners have faced scandals involving corruption, fraud, money laundering and drug trafficking. Here's an in-depth look at the company’s licensing business around the world, focusing on controversial projects in Mexico, Brazil, Dominican Republic and Panama.

In late 1997, Donald Trump was beginning to bounce back from near financial ruin. Two years earlier, his financial losses had totaled $916 million following a string of bankruptcies at Trump casinos and other properties earlier in the decade, according to tax records published in late 2016. But then, Trump stumbled upon a deal that would change the course of his real estate business.

In Seoul, South Korea, a proposed tower on the banks of the Han River needed a name to convey luxury to prospective buyers. The project’s developer, the Daewoo Group, wanted to pay Trump for the use of his name, nothing more. Under the arrangement, Trump would receive a branding fee and a percentage of the building’s annual revenue, a strategy that is common among international hospitality brands.

Abraham Wallach, then the Trump Organization’s executive vice president for development and acquisitions, said he traveled to South Korea with Trump and saw in the project an intriguing formula: profit with virtually no investment. "I was looking at these nice buildings," he recalled in an interview with Univision, "and I was saying, ‘Gee, there’s an opportunity here.’”

According to Wallach, anyone can become a Trump partner, as long as they’re willing to pay his fee.

https://www.univision.com/univision-news/latin-america/trump-org-magnet-for-dirty-businessmen