Report links Trump hotel to corrupt Azerbaijan oligarchs and Iranian terror grp.

Source: raw Story | March 6, 2017 | Travis Gettys

Bombshell report links Trump hotel to corrupt Azerbaijan oligarchs and Iranian terror group

President Donald Trump and his eldest daughter developed a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation run by a family known as “the Corleones of the Caspian” with links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

The Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku — conceived in 2008 as a luxury apartment building but converted in 2014 into a hotel — has never opened, and both local observers and international experts are baffled by the building’s existence, reported The New Yorker.

The project was intended as an “ultra-luxury property” with both hotel and residential space, but both its location and timing are odd, according to the report.

Trump Tower Baku is located in an underdeveloped part of the city’s downtown, across the street from a discount shopping center and miles away from the main business district.

“Why would someone put a luxury hotel there?” said former top official in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Tourism. “Nobody who can afford to stay there would want to be in that neighborhood.”

The Trump Organization announced the project would be converted into just a hotel in 2014, after a construction boom had ended in Baku and luxury hotel occupancy rate hovered around 35 percent, the magazine reported.

A Cornell University expert told The New Yorker that developers of five-star hotels typically must demonstrate an average occupancy rate of at least 60 percent over 10 years.

Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald reported in September that Trump’s financial filings show he’s partners in the Baku deal with the son of Azerbaijan’s transportation minister.

U.S. officials believe that official, Ziya Mammadov, laundered money for the Iranian military, although no formal charges were brought against him or his son, Anar Mammadov — who is Trump’s partner in the Baku hotel venture.

The New Yorker examined Trump’s ties to Ziya Mammadov — one of the wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs in one of the world’s most corrupt nations — and his brother, Elton Mammadov, an influential member of the Azerbaijani parliament, who signed contracts for the project and founded Baku XXI Century, which owns the tower.

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