The Missing Millions Behind Trump's Scottish Golf Courses
The Missing Millions Behind Trump's Scottish Golf Courses
Matt Bernardini delves into the mystery of how Donald Trump funded his two loss-making Scottish Golf resorts.
As prosecutors in the United States burrow into Donald Trump’s finances and reveal that he is not actually as wealthy as he likes to claim, one big mystery remains. Where on Earth did he come up with the cash to purchase two Scottish golf courses?
One group that has repeatedly sought answers to this question is the global activist organization Avaaz. They have previously urged the Scottish government to use an Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO) to investigate how Trump made the purchases. A UWO requires a person to explain the source of the wealth that they used to purchase a property. It’s designed to root out the very corruption that Trump brings with him.
The Scottish government has so far remained resistant to issuing such an order. When the Scottish Green Party put forward a motion calling for a UWO, it was defeated by 89 votes to 32 in the Scottish Parliament in February 2021.
According to Reuters, Humza Yousaf, the Scottish justice minister, said Donald Trump was a “deplorable individual” but it was not for politicians to instigate such investigations.
A spokesperson for the National Crime Agency said, “If we have evidence that there were illicit funds involved... we could look at one.”
It’s unclear to what extent anyone has looked for that evidence, however. For years the funding behind Trump’s Scottish golf courses have been shrouded in mystery. He purchased the Turnberry golf course in April 2014 for £35.7 million ($60 million) in cash. It was his biggest investment in years and came at a time when Trump was on a cash buying spree. The question of how he was able to come up with enough liquid assets to buy the golf courses is one that has confounded experts.
Just last week, new financial reports showed that his Scottish golf courses continue to lose large amounts of money. Trump Turnberry reported a pre-tax loss of o £3.7 million ($4.5 million) last year, while Trump’s other golf course in Aberdeenshire lost £697,000 ($853,000). Previous years have also shown losses.
If this isn’t evidence enough that an investigation is warranted, then the government might want to check the public record. Trump’s previous dealings involve a Who’s Who of businessmen who have a questionable financial history. Here’s a few examples to refresh the National Crime Agency’s memory.
In 2006 the Bayrock Group teamed up with the Sapir Organization to launch Trump SoHo. Bayrock, a private real estate investment firm, was founded by Tevfik Arif, a Soviet-born businessman, who was investigated for running a prostitution ring. A former Bayrock employee sued the company, alleging that it was a front for money laundering. The Financial Times reported that at the time Bayrock was collaborating with Trump, it was connected to a money laundering scheme involving a former Kazakh energy minister.
The other partner in the project, the Sapir Organization was set up by Tamir Sapir, a Georgian-born businessman who emigrated to the United States in the 1970s. He reportedly was the person who introduced Trump to Arif. Newly-released memos show that the FBI had investigated Sapir for money laundering in the 1990s.
“It is believed that Sapir is used as a front for Russian organized crime money,” one FBI memo said.
Trump got in on SoHo by licensing his name to the property for 18% of the profits. Despite the sweetheart deal, the project ended up being a disappointment and the Trump Organization withdrew from it in 2017. Trump’s own children were almost indicted for lying to investors in an attempt to boost condo sales in the building.
Around the same time he got involved in Trump SoHo, the former president was also involved in an even shadier deal with Trump Tower Toronto. The project was first conceived in 2001 but struggled to raise the money necessary until a Russian-Canadian billionaire named Alex Shnaider stepped in.
While many of the details surrounding financing for the project have not been fully revealed, the story of Trump’s own involvement has flip-flopped. Initially, he bragged to a reporter that he had made a substantial investment in the tower, yet it was later revealed that he only had a licensing agreement. Austrian bank Raiffeisen, which did not usually invest in North American projects, put up $C310 million to finance the deal. The project fell apart in 2016, yet strangely Raiffeisen never sought repayment on its loan.
Just as shady characters and money of questionable origin were not an impediment to Trump, sanctions weren’t either. As is well known by now, during his first campaign for president, Trump sought to build a tower in Moscow and negotiated the deal while he campaigned. His associate Felix Sater, who also worked at Bayrock with Arif, claimed that he had secured financing for the project from VTB bank, which is under sanctions. Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen even went so far as to discuss the project with an aide to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
Trump Unravelling
For too long, law enforcement in the United States failed to take allegations of Donald Trump’s criminality seriously, just as the Scottish government appears to have done. Yet finally that is beginning to change, and it appears that Trump’s catch-me-if-you-can act may finally be ending.
Last year, in September 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit in state court accusing Trump and his children of fraudulently overvaluing their assets by billions of dollars. She is seeking to ensure that Trump and his children can never operate a business in New York again and has reportedly referred the matter to federal prosecutors.
In January 2023, the Trump Organization was ordered to pay a $1.6 million penalty after it was convicted of tax fraud. Although Trump was not charged in the case, the company’s CFO Allen Weisselberg is currently sitting in prison.
And the House of Representatives recently made Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020 available. In those returns, investigative journalist David Cay Johnston noted that Trump filed 26 sole proprietor reports, showing business expenses despite those businesses having zero revenue.
“That created losses which Trump used to offset his income from work and investments, thus lowering his income taxes,” Johnston said.
As the curtains are pulled back on Trump’s business empire, the web of dodgy connections and practices becomes increasingly clear. The Scottish government should not hesitate to pull those curtains back even further.