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Eurasia
January 19, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 21
Trump thrown question on dubious Kazakh money during Nazarbayev visit
bne IntelliNews
Donald Trump was briefly put on the spot by a re- porter over whether Kazakh money was invested in Manhattan’s Trump SoHo, during Kazakh Presi- dent Nursultan Nazarbayev’s visit to the White House. News agencies on January 17 reported that the US president “looked surprised” when asked the question, before responding: “No idea. Really no idea.”
Trump SoHo, a 46-storey luxury apartments and hotel complex in Manhattan, is now named The Dominick after having the name of Trump re- moved from it last December following the Trump Organization’s loss of control of the building and speculation that some residents did not want to be associated with the tumultuous president.
A Financial Times investigation alleged in
2016 that the Trump SoHo venture might have links to a claimed Kazakh money laundering scheme tied to the family of a former Kazakh en- ergy minister and ex-mayor of Almaty city, Viktor Khrapunov, and the building’s past may feature in investigations being conducted by US special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Specifically, Khrapunov’s son, Ilyas Khrapunov, supposedly bought condos in the complex. It was later al- leged that Khrapunov’s purchases were meant to conceal assets of his oligarch father-in-law and fugitive banker Mukhtar Ablyazov.
A Bloomberg report recently reiterated these alle- gations, also noting Ilyas Khrapunov worked on a
separate deal with Felix Sater, a former executive of New York-based real estate developer Bayrock Development and one-time adviser to Trump.
Moreover, the report alleged that millions of dol- lars from a Kazakh chromium miner, Aktyubinsk Chromium Chemicals Plant (AZXS), flowed into Bayrock, which partnered with Trump to construct Trump SoHo. Bayrock was founded and run by Tevfik Arif, a Kazakh of ethnic-Turkish origin.
An ongoing civil lawsuit against Bayrock and its executives revealed that Arif supposedly funnelled money to the Trump Tower-based company from the profits of AZXS, which was controlled by Arif's brother Refik. However, Bayrock has rejected these and other allegations in the lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed by an ex-finance director of Bayrock, Jody Kriss, also suggests the company may have been involved in money laundering.
The meeting between Trump and Nazarbayev did not appear to brush against any of Trump’s own potential business ties to Kazakhstan.
Some analysts believe Nazarbayev, whether will- ingly or on behalf of Russia, may have attempted to take on the mantle of a mediator between the US and Russia and that Trump’s choice to host a meeting with Nazarbayev was due to his present inability to meet with Putin directly.
After all, Kazakhstan last year supported Russia’s Syrian peace talk efforts by hosting gatherings in