Former Trump Tower in Azerbaijan, Dogged by Controversy, Is Engulfed by Fire
The Trump Organization withdrew its licensing agreement for the Baku skyscraper shortly after the 2016 election, as it promised to wind down international projects that could pose conflicts of interest to the president.
Mr. Trump had partnered in the development with the son of a former minister of transportation in the oil-rich former Soviet state.
The Trump-branded hotel never opened, but it was dogged by controversy. Mr. Trump cut the deal despite allegations by United States diplomats that the minister had dealings with front companies for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and was corrupt.
After the New Yorker article was published in 2017, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, was among lawmakers who wrote to Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin; Attorney General Jeff Sessions; and James B. Comey, then director of the F.B.I., seeking an investigation into the issues raised in the article.
The planned hotel had been under construction since 2008 and was nearing completion when Mr. Trump announced the licensing agreement six months before joining the presidential race in 2015.
His partner was Anar Mammadov, the billionaire son of the country’s former minister of transportation, Ziya Mammadov. In a diplomatic cable leaked in 2009, American diplomats described the father as “notoriously corrupt, even for Azerbaijan.”
The cable also accused the former minister of awarding highway construction projects to a onetime senior Iranian military official in the Revolutionary Guards.
“We assume Mammadov is a silent partner in these contracts,” the diplomatic cable said.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization told The Associated Press for an article published in June 2016 that the organization had been unaware of the corruption accusations and the Iranian links of the Mammadov family, but that it postponed the project that year for economic reasons.
The Trump Organization pulled out of the deal that December and dropped a host of other overseas projects after the election.
The post Former Trump Tower in Azerbaijan, Dogged by Controversy, Is Engulfed by Fire appeared first on World The News.
from World The News https://ift.tt/2KqmKFN
via World News
Comments
Post a Comment