Who Keeps Trying To Burn Down Trump Tower, Baku? As Trump Said, The Mob Takes The Fifth

Yesterday's fire at Trump Tower Azerbaijan isn't being covered correctly by the media. The real story is that Trump and his Mafia buddies have been trying to burn the building down-- for insurance purposes-- for a couple of years. I'll get to that in a moment. First, though, let's look at what's being so shoddily reported this weekend.

A skyscraper that was slated to become a Trump International Hotel in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku has caught fire.

The Azadliq newspaper reported that the blaze broke out on the middle floors of the 33-storey building, which is locally known as Trump Tower, and spread.

Etibar Mirzoev, deputy head of the Emergency Situations Ministry, said there were no injuries and authorities were working to establish the cause of the of the fire.

He said it took more than three hours to extinguish the flames and suggested the response was delayed because of road closures put in place for Sunday’s Grand Prix, on the Baku City Circuit.

It came after an apartment fire at Trump Tower in New York left a prominent art dealer dead and six firefighters injured earlier this month.

Development was started on the tower in Baku a decade ago but it has never opened.

Originally planned as a luxury apartment building by local developers, the project was taken over by the future US President’s company in 2012.

The Trump Organisation announced that a hotel would occupy the first 13 floors, with flats on the storeys above, but pulled out of the project in December 2016 following Mr Trump’s election.

There was controversy over affiliation between the company that owned the project, Baku XXI Century, and a local family associated with corruption. Every paragraph has at least one mistake, some so shockingly incorrect that it destroys the meaning of what actually happened. So... let me go back to

a post we wrote over a year ago.

Monday, both Rachel's researchers and New Yorker writer Adam Davidson made a few small-- but significant-- errors (and omissions) in the report that each filed on the Trump Azerbaijan scandal. Maddow's long, circuitous dramatic report-- once she got to it-- was just based on Davidson's article. As usual, she had nothing substantive to add, just some entertainment-value drama and random superfluous facts barely-- at best-- related to the matter at hand. The video above came after the long circuitous thing, which I won't bore you with, and is her interview with Davidson who spent more time in Baku than I did-- but must have not talked to the right people there... which I did... back in June.

Last summer I visited Azerbaijan for the first time, at the suggestion of first Alan Grayson and later Ted Lieu. Both had been there and both recommended it highly, especially since I was going to be in the "neighborhood" (Moscow) anyway. I did a few posts here and a few posts at my travel blog. The top takeaway was that Trump was in business-- not just in Azerbaijan, but literally everywhere in the world-- with the most corrupt criminal elements in the world. Both Davidson and Maddow got that.

What Davidson missed (he got it wrong) was that Trump Tower Baku did open (albeit without a "Grand Opening") and did start renting out rooms-- and was almost immediately shuttered-- and that eventually-- after it was clear it would not be in business in time for the week long festivities around the Formula 1 Race (the 2016 European Grand Prix), the Mammadov mafia tried burning it down, presumably for the insurance money. Davidson messing up on that caused Maddow to go off on her theory about how if the business was never meant to make any financial sense, it must have had another reason to exist. She isn't necessarily wrong about the money-laundering aspect from Iran's Revolutionary Guard-- the CIA had been talking about that and that relationship with Trump's partners, the Mammadovs, for years. But Trump Tower Baku was very much meant to be-- at least by Trump and Ivanka-- a profitable, on-going enterprise.

What they didn't quite understand was that Baku is a "with it" cosmopolitan and highly-educated and connected city/society. Other than the politics of a kleptocracy/kakistocracy, the city is not some impoverished backward backwater. As soon as Trump went on a campaign-related rampage against Muslims, this progressive and relative secular city realized he was shit-talking them. And that was the end of any chance Trump Tower Baku could be a success. By the time I got there, they were already debating how long it would take before they could change the name and re-open.

Here's the stuff Davidson missed that my sources in Baku told me. A team claiming to be part of the Trump Organization went through Baku's 5-star hotels hiring away many of the best employees. How could that have happened? They offered to pay people high salaries that included 6 month advances. Nothing like that had ever happened in the Baku hotel industry and Trump Tower was soon far more filled with employees than Trump doddering administration has been.

Now, remember, the crooked Transportation Minister, Ziya Mammadov, who went from a lowly railway worker to a billionaire/Mafioso, owns a lot of Azerbaijan. His son, Anar, is a shady character and a perfect fit for The Donald. It was only a matter of time before they found each other, which they did when Anar decided to rent Trump's name for his glitzy new hotel. He paid Trump between $2.5 and $2.8 million for the right to slap "Trump Tower" on his building and to get some "consultations" from Ivanka. In November, 2014, the Trump Organization announced that Trump Tower Baku was part of it's hotel empire and The Donald himself boasted that "Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku represents the unwavering standard of excellence of The Trump Organization and our involvement in only the best global development projects. When we open in 2015, visitors and residents will experience a luxurious property unlike anything else in Baku-- it will be among the finest in the world." Ivanka added that "This incredible building reflects the highest level of luxury and refinement, with extraordinary architecture inspired by the Caspian Sea and sophisticated interiors that seamlessly blend contemporary style with timeless appeal. We are looking forward to bringing our unparalleled Trump services and amenities to Azerbaijan.”

It sort of opened. Trump's partner, Anar, has been described by U.S. diplomats as "notoriously corrupt" and as working to launder money for the Iranian military. The hotel hired a full staff and started renting rooms but never had a promised grand opening. Everyone in the Baku hotel industry knows someone who worked there... briefly.

Trump often talks of hiring the best people and surrounding himself with people he can trust. In practice, however, he and his executives have at times appeared to overlook details about the background of people he has chosen as business partners, such as whether they had dubious associations, had been convicted of crimes, faced extradition or inflated their resumes.

...In the Azerbaijani case, Garten said the Trump Organization had performed meticulous due diligence on the company's partners, but hadn't researched the allegations against the Baku partner's father because he wasn't a party to the deal.

"I've never heard that before," Garten said, when first asked about allegations of Iranian money laundering by the partner's father, which appeared in U.S. diplomatic cables widely available since they were leaked in 2010.

Garten subsequently said he was confident the minister alleged to be laundering Iranian funds, Ziya Mammadov, had no involvement in his son's holding company, even though some of the son's major businesses regularly partnered with the transportation ministry and were founded while the son was in college overseas. Ziya Mammadov did not respond to a telephone message the AP left with his ministry in Baku or to emails to the Azerbaijan Embassy in Washington.

Garten told the AP that Trump's company uses a third-party investigative firm, which he did not identify, that specializes in background intelligence gathering and searches global watch lists, warrant lists and sanctions lists maintained by the United Nations, Interpol and others.

...Any American contemplating a business venture in Azerbaijan faces a risk: "endemic public corruption," as the State Department puts it. Much of that money flows from the oil and gas industries, but the State Department also considers the country to be a waypoint for terrorist financiers, Iranian sanctions-busters and Afghan drug lords.

The environment is a risky one for any business venture seeking to avoid violating U.S. penalties imposed against Iran or anti-bribery laws under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

...Garten said the Trump Organization had performed background screening on all those involved in the deal and was confident Mammadov's father played no role in the project.

Experts on Azerbaijan were mystified that Trump or anyone else could reach that conclusion.

Anar Mammadov is widely viewed by diplomats and nongovernmental organizations as a transparent stand-in for the business interests of his father. Anar's business has boomed with regular help from his father's ministry, receiving exclusive government contracts, a near monopoly on Baku's taxi business and even a free fleet of autobuses.

"These are not business people acting on their own-- you're dealing with daddy," said Richard Kauzlarich, a U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s who went on to work under the Director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush administration.

"Whatever the Trump people thought they were doing, that wasn't reality," Kauzlarich said.

Anar Mammadov, who is believed to be 35, has said in a series of interviews that he founded Garant Holdings' predecessor-- which has arms in transportation, construction, banking, telecommunications and manufacturing-- in 2000, when he would have been 19. Anar received his bachelor's degree in 2003 and a master's in business administration in 2005-- both from a university in London.

Mammadov's statement that he founded the business in 2000 appeared in a magazine produced by a research firm in partnership with the Azerbaijani government. In other forums, he has said he started the business in 2005, though several of its key subsidiaries predate that period.

As Davidson wrote, "After Donald Trump became a candidate for President, in 2015, Mother Jones, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and other publications ran articles that raised questions about his involvement in the Baku project. These reports cited a series of cables sent from the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan in 2009 and 2010, which were made public by WikiLeaks. In one of the cables, a U.S. diplomat described Ziya Mammadov as 'notoriously corrupt even for Azerbaijan.' The Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, told reporters that the Baku hotel project raised no ethical issues for Donald Trump, because his company had never engaged directly with Mammadov."

Late in the presidential campaign, after he had beaten all the Republicans and was facing Clinton, Trump had a visit from American intelligence officials who explained to him the ramifications of being in business with Mammadov was so overwhelmingly disqualifying that he had to end the relationship immediately. I don't know what they showed him exactly, but Trump Tower Baku completely disappeared from Trump World.

No evidence has surfaced showing that Donald Trump, or any of his employees involved in the Baku deal, actively participated in bribery, money laundering, or other illegal behavior. But the Trump Organization may have broken the law in its work with the Mammadov family. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, passed in 1977, forbade American companies from participating in a scheme to reward a foreign government official in exchange for material benefit or preferential treatment. The law even made it a crime for an American company to unknowingly benefit from a partner’s corruption if it could have discovered illicit activity but avoided doing so. This closed what was known as the “head in the sand” loophole.

...Even a cursory look at the Mammadovs suggests that they are not ideal partners for an American business. Four years before the Trump Organization announced the Baku deal, WikiLeaks released the U.S. diplomatic cables indicating that the family was corrupt; one cable mentioned the Mammadovs’ link to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In 2013, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project investigated the Mammadov family’s corruption and published well-documented exposés. Six months before the hotel announcement, Foreign Policy ran an article titled “The Corleones of the Caspian,” which suggested that the Mammadovs had exploited Ziya’s position as Transportation Minister to make their fortunes.

...To this day, the Trump Organization has not provided satisfying answers to the most basic questions about the Baku deal: who owns Baku XXI Century, the company with which they signed the contracts; the origin of the funds with which Baku XXI Century paid the Trump Organization; whether the Mammadovs used their political power to benefit themselves and the Trump Organization; and whether the Mammadovs used money obtained from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to fund the Trump Tower Baku.

...More than a dozen lawyers with experience in F.C.P.A. prosecution expressed surprise at the Trump Organization’s seemingly lax approach to vetting its foreign partners. But, when I asked a former Trump Organization executive if the Baku deal had seemed unusual, he laughed. “No deal there seems unusual, as long as a check is attached,” he said.

Remember, the first significant piece of legislation Trump signed was a bill repealing an Obama administration rule focring energy and mining companies to disclose any payments (bribes) they made abroad. Trumpanzee: "This is a big signing, a very important signing. And this is H.J. Resolution 41, disapproving the Securities and Exchange Commission's rule on disclosure of payments by resource extraction issuers. It's a big deal. And I want to thank Speaker Paul Ryan for being here. He's been tremendous. Jeb Hensarling very, very important and really worked hard. Representative Bill Huizenga and all of the friends-- Peter-- all of my friends are up here. And we really appreciate it." I'm sure he did-- and what's good enough for the Oil barons is certainly good enough for the hotel developing mobsters, no?

After Trump, The Culture Of Corruption Will Never Be The Same-- Take Azerbaijan

Monday, both Rachel's researchers and New Yorker writer Adam Davidson made a few small-- but significant-- errors (and omissions) in the report that each filed on the Trump Azerbaijan scandal. Maddow's long, circuitous dramatic report-- once she got to it-- was just based on Davidson's article. As usual, she had nothing substantive to add, just some entertainment-value drama and random superfluous facts barely-- at best-- related to the matter at hand. The video above came after the long circuitous thing, which I won't bore you with, and is her interview with Davidson who spent more time in Baku than I did-- but must have not talked to the right people there... which I did... back in June.

Last summer I visited Azerbaijan for the first time, at the suggestion of first Alan Grayson and later Ted Lieu. Both had been there and both recommended it highly, especially since I was going to be in the "neighborhood" (Moscow) anyway. I did a few posts here and a few posts at my travel blog. The top takeaway was that Trump was in business-- not just in Azerbaijan, but literally everywhere in the world-- with the most corrupt criminal elements in the world. Both Davidson and Maddow got that.

What Davidson missed (he got it wrong) was that Trump Tower Baku did open (albeit without a "Grand Opening") and did start renting out rooms-- and was almost immediately shuttered-- and that eventually-- after it was clear it would not be in business in time for the week long festivities around the Formula 1 Race (the 2016 European Grand Prix), the Mammadov mafia tried burning it down, presumably for the insurance money. Davidson messing up on that caused Maddow to go off on her theory about how if the business was never meant to make any financial sense, it must have had another reason to exist. She isn't necessarily wrong about the money-laundering aspect from Iran's Revolutionary Guard-- the CIA had been talking about that and that relationship with Trump's partners, the Mammadovs, for years. But Trump Tower Baku was very much meant to be-- at least by Trump and Ivanka-- a profitable, on-going enterprise.

What they didn't quite understand was that Baku is a "with it" cosmopolitan and highly-educated and connected city/society. Other than the politics of a kleptocracy/kakistocracy, the city is not some impoverished backward backwater. As soon as Trump went on a campaign-related rampage against Muslims, this progressive and relative secular city realized he was shit-talking them. And that was the end of any chance Trump Tower Baku could be a success. By the time I got there, they were already debating how long it would take before they could change the name and re-open.

Here's the stuff Davidson missed that my sources in Baku told me. A team claiming to be part of the Trump Organization went through Baku's 5-star hotels hiring away many of the best employees. How could that have happened? They offered to pay people high salaries that included 6 month advances. Nothing like that had ever happened in the Baku hotel industry and Trump Tower was soon far more filled with employees than Trump doddering administration has been.

Now, remember, the crooked Transportation Minister, Ziya Mammadov, who went from a lowly railway worker to a billionaire/Mafioso, owns a lot of Azerbaijan. His son, Anar, is a shady character and a perfect fit for The Donald. It was only a matter of time before they found each other, which they did when Anar decided to rent Trump's name for his glitzy new hotel. He paid Trump between $2.5 and $2.8 million for the right to slap "Trump Tower" on his building and to get some "consultations" from Ivanka. In November, 2014, the Trump Organization announced that Trump Tower Baku was part of it's hotel empire and The Donald himself boasted that "Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku represents the unwavering standard of excellence of The Trump Organization and our involvement in only the best global development projects. When we open in 2015, visitors and residents will experience a luxurious property unlike anything else in Baku-- it will be among the finest in the world." Ivanka added that "This incredible building reflects the highest level of luxury and refinement, with extraordinary architecture inspired by the Caspian Sea and sophisticated interiors that seamlessly blend contemporary style with timeless appeal. We are looking forward to bringing our unparalleled Trump services and amenities to Azerbaijan.”

It sort of opened. Trump's partner, Anar, has been described by U.S. diplomats as "notoriously corrupt" and as working to launder money for the Iranian military. The hotel hired a full staff and started renting rooms but never had a promised grand opening. Everyone in the Baku hotel industry knows someone who worked there... briefly.

Trump often talks of hiring the best people and surrounding himself with people he can trust. In practice, however, he and his executives have at times appeared to overlook details about the background of people he has chosen as business partners, such as whether they had dubious associations, had been convicted of crimes, faced extradition or inflated their resumes.

...In the Azerbaijani case, Garten said the Trump Organization had performed meticulous due diligence on the company's partners, but hadn't researched the allegations against the Baku partner's father because he wasn't a party to the deal.

"I've never heard that before," Garten said, when first asked about allegations of Iranian money laundering by the partner's father, which appeared in U.S. diplomatic cables widely available since they were leaked in 2010.

Garten subsequently said he was confident the minister alleged to be laundering Iranian funds, Ziya Mammadov, had no involvement in his son's holding company, even though some of the son's major businesses regularly partnered with the transportation ministry and were founded while the son was in college overseas. Ziya Mammadov did not respond to a telephone message the AP left with his ministry in Baku or to emails to the Azerbaijan Embassy in Washington.

Garten told the AP that Trump's company uses a third-party investigative firm, which he did not identify, that specializes in background intelligence gathering and searches global watch lists, warrant lists and sanctions lists maintained by the United Nations, Interpol and others.

...Any American contemplating a business venture in Azerbaijan faces a risk: "endemic public corruption," as the State Department puts it. Much of that money flows from the oil and gas industries, but the State Department also considers the country to be a waypoint for terrorist financiers, Iranian sanctions-busters and Afghan drug lords.

The environment is a risky one for any business venture seeking to avoid violating U.S. penalties imposed against Iran or anti-bribery laws under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

...Garten said the Trump Organization had performed background screening on all those involved in the deal and was confident Mammadov's father played no role in the project.

Experts on Azerbaijan were mystified that Trump or anyone else could reach that conclusion.

Anar Mammadov is widely viewed by diplomats and nongovernmental organizations as a transparent stand-in for the business interests of his father. Anar's business has boomed with regular help from his father's ministry, receiving exclusive government contracts, a near monopoly on Baku's taxi business and even a free fleet of autobuses.

"These are not business people acting on their own-- you're dealing with daddy," said Richard Kauzlarich, a U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s who went on to work under the Director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush administration.

"Whatever the Trump people thought they were doing, that wasn't reality," Kauzlarich said.

Anar Mammadov, who is believed to be 35, has said in a series of interviews that he founded Garant Holdings' predecessor-- which has arms in transportation, construction, banking, telecommunications and manufacturing-- in 2000, when he would have been 19. Anar received his bachelor's degree in 2003 and a master's in business administration in 2005-- both from a university in London.

Mammadov's statement that he founded the business in 2000 appeared in a magazine produced by a research firm in partnership with the Azerbaijani government. In other forums, he has said he started the business in 2005, though several of its key subsidiaries predate that period.

As Davidson wrote, "After Donald Trump became a candidate for President, in 2015, Mother Jones, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and other publications ran articles that raised questions about his involvement in the Baku project. These reports cited a series of cables sent from the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan in 2009 and 2010, which were made public by WikiLeaks. In one of the cables, a U.S. diplomat described Ziya Mammadov as 'notoriously corrupt even for Azerbaijan.' The Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, told reporters that the Baku hotel project raised no ethical issues for Donald Trump, because his company had never engaged directly with Mammadov."

Late in the presidential campaign, after he had beaten all the Republicans and was facing Clinton, Trump had a visit from American intelligence officials who explained to him the ramifications of being in business with Mammadov was so overwhelmingly disqualifying that he had to end the relationship immediately. I don't know what they showed him exactly, but Trump Tower Baku completely disappeared from Trump World.

No evidence has surfaced showing that Donald Trump, or any of his employees involved in the Baku deal, actively participated in bribery, money laundering, or other illegal behavior. But the Trump Organization may have broken the law in its work with the Mammadov family. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, passed in 1977, forbade American companies from participating in a scheme to reward a foreign government official in exchange for material benefit or preferential treatment. The law even made it a crime for an American company to unknowingly benefit from a partner’s corruption if it could have discovered illicit activity but avoided doing so. This closed what was known as the “head in the sand” loophole.

...Even a cursory look at the Mammadovs suggests that they are not ideal partners for an American business. Four years before the Trump Organization announced the Baku deal, WikiLeaks released the U.S. diplomatic cables indicating that the family was corrupt; one cable mentioned the Mammadovs’ link to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In 2013, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project investigated the Mammadov family’s corruption and published well-documented exposés. Six months before the hotel announcement, Foreign Policy ran an article titled “The Corleones of the Caspian,” which suggested that the Mammadovs had exploited Ziya’s position as Transportation Minister to make their fortunes.

...To this day, the Trump Organization has not provided satisfying answers to the most basic questions about the Baku deal: who owns Baku XXI Century, the company with which they signed the contracts; the origin of the funds with which Baku XXI Century paid the Trump Organization; whether the Mammadovs used their political power to benefit themselves and the Trump Organization; and whether the Mammadovs used money obtained from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to fund the Trump Tower Baku.

...More than a dozen lawyers with experience in F.C.P.A. prosecution expressed surprise at the Trump Organization’s seemingly lax approach to vetting its foreign partners. But, when I asked a former Trump Organization executive if the Baku deal had seemed unusual, he laughed. “No deal there seems unusual, as long as a check is attached,” he said.

Remember, the first significant piece of legislation Trump signed was a bill repealing an Obama administration rule focring energy and mining companies to disclose any payments (bribes) they made abroad. Trumpanzee: "This is a big signing, a very important signing. And this is H.J. Resolution 41, disapproving the Securities and Exchange Commission's rule on disclosure of payments by resource extraction issuers. It's a big deal. And I want to thank Speaker Paul Ryan for being here. He's been tremendous. Jeb Hensarling very, very important and really worked hard. Representative Bill Huizenga and all of the friends-- Peter-- all of my friends are up here. And we really appreciate it." I'm sure he did-- and what's good enough for the Oil barons is certainly good enough for the hotel developing mobsters, no?

What Secrets Is Mueller Finding As He Investigates Trump's Shady Foreign Deals?-- Part I

-by Valley Girl



As I told Howie, I went to the New Yorker site looking for (cat) cartoons. But I never got that far, because almost immediately I discovered some fascinating investigative articles written by Adam Davidson. Two are worthy of particular note, given Robert Mueller’s brief to investigate the business dealings of Donald Trump. The first, published on March 13, 2017, is titled Donald Trump's Worst Deal. The subtitle is “The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.” I’ll summarize that here. The second will appear in a separate post here at DWT later this evening... Yes, probably your first ever whole night in the Caucuses.

Howie has traveled to Azerbaijan, and seen the Trump Tower in Baku up close and personal. He’s written about this at DWT; here are some of his posts about Baku's rampant corruption and the Trump family.

Some background about Azerbaijan- from wiki:

The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence in 1918 and became the first democratic state in the Muslim-oriented world. The country was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920 as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. The modern Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991, prior to the official dissolution of the USSR in December 1991.

In summarizing Davidson’s ~7000 word article, I pared it down to the essence, but didn’t change his (very careful) wording. Note these when reading: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Mammadov family’s corruption, The Corleones of the Caspian.

And, before or after you read the summary, watch: This CNN video interview is excellent, but not embeddable, alas: The New Yorker's Adam Davidson speaks to Christiane Amanpour about his piece on Donald Trump's business with oligarchs tied to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. It’s a "must watch," and the information jumps out at you in a way that it just doesn’t on the written page.

The Trump Tower Baku never opened. Trump partnered with an Azerbaijani family that U.S. officials called notoriously unethical.

Heydar Aliyev Prospekti, a broad avenue in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, connects the airport to the city. The road is meant to highlight Baku’s recent modernization, and it is lined with sleek new buildings.

As you approach the city center, a tower at the end of the avenue looms in front of you. The building, a five-star hotel and residence called the Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku, has never opened, though from the road it looks ready to welcome the public.

The more time I spent in the neighborhood, the more I wondered how the hotel could have been imagined as a viable business. The development was conceived, in 2008, as a high-end apartment building. In 2012, after Donald Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, signed multiple contracts with the Azerbaijani developers behind the project, plans were made to transform the tower into an “ultra-luxury property.” According to a Trump Organization press release, a hotel with “expansive guest rooms” would occupy the first thirteen floors; higher stories would feature residences with “spectacular views of the city and Caspian Sea.” For an expensive hotel, the Trump Tower Baku is in an oddly unglamorous location: the underdeveloped eastern end of downtown, which is dominated by train tracks and is miles from the main business district, on the west side of the city. Across the street from the hotel is a discount shopping center; the area is filled with narrow, dingy shops and hookah bars. Other hotels nearby are low-budget options: at the AYF Palace, most rooms are forty-two dollars a night. There are no upscale restaurants or shops. Any guests of the Trump Tower Baku would likely feel marooned.

The timing of the project was also curious. By 2014, when the Trump Organization publicly announced that it was helping to turn the tower into a hotel, a construction boom in Baku had ended, and the occupancy rate for luxury hotels in the city hovered around thirty-five per cent.

A former top official in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Tourism says that, when he learned of the Trump hotel project, he asked himself, “Why would someone put a luxury hotel there? Nobody who can afford to stay there would want to be in that neighborhood.”

The Azerbaijanis behind the project were close relatives of Ziya Mammadov, the Transportation Minister and one of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs. According to the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, Azerbaijan is among the most corrupt nations in the world.

After Donald Trump became a candidate for President, in 2015, (several) publications … raised questions about his involvement in the Baku project... a U.S. diplomat described Ziya Mammadov as “notoriously corrupt even for Azerbaijan.” The Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, told reporters that the Baku hotel project raised no ethical issues for Donald Trump, because his company had never engaged directly with Mammadov.

A month after Trump was elected President, Garten announced that the Trump Organization had severed its ties with the hotel project, describing the decision to CNN as little more than “housecleaning.” I was in Baku at the time, and it had become clear that the Trump Organization’s story of the hotel was incomplete and inaccurate.

Ivanka in Baku

An Azerbaijani lawyer who worked on the project revealed to me that the Trump Organization had not just licensed the family name; it also had signed a technical-services agreement in which it promised to help its partner meet Trump design standards. Technical-services agreements are often nominal addenda to licensing deals... The Azerbaijani lawyer told me, “We were always following their instructions. We were in constant contact with the Trump Organization. They approved the smallest details.”

Ivanka Trump was the most senior Trump Organization official on the Baku project. In October, 2014, she visited the city to tour the site and offer advice... The Azerbaijani lawyer said, “Ivanka personally approved everything.”

The sustained back-and-forth between the Trump Organization and the Mammadovs has legal significance... Tom Fox, a Houston lawyer who specializes in anti-corruption compliance, said, “It’s a problem if you’re making a profit off of someone else’s corrupt conduct.”

Before signing a deal with a foreign partner, American companies, including major hotel chains, conduct risk assessments and background checks that take a close look at the country, the prospective partner, and the people involved... A senior executive at one of the largest American hotel chains, who asked for anonymity because he feared reprisal from the Trump Administration, said, “We wouldn’t look at due diligence as a burden. There certainly is a cost to doing it, especially in higher-risk places. But it’s as much an investment in the protection of that brand. It’s money well spent.”

Alan Garten told me that the Trump Organization had commissioned a risk assessment for the Baku deal, but declined to name the company that had performed it. …according to Garten, the Trump Organization had undertaken “extensive due diligence” before making the hotel deal and had not discovered “any red flags.”

But the Mammadov family, in addition to its reputation for corruption, has a troubling connection that any proper risk assessment should have unearthed: for years, it has been financially entangled with an Iranian family tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideologically driven military force.

I asked Garten how deeply the Trump Organization had looked into the Mammadov family’s political connections. …When I asked him to provide documentation of due diligence, he said that he couldn’t share it with me, because “it’s confidential and privileged.”

(But) the Trump Organization may have broken the law in its work with the Mammadov family. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, passed in 1977, forbade American companies from participating in a scheme to reward a foreign government official in exchange for material benefit or preferential treatment. The law even made it a crime for an American company to unknowingly benefit from a partner’s corruption if it could have discovered illicit activity but avoided doing so. This closed what was known as the “head in the sand” loophole.

Even a cursory look at the Mammadovs suggests that they are not ideal partners for an American business. Four years before the Trump Organization announced the Baku deal, WikiLeaks released the U.S. diplomatic cables indicating that the family was corrupt; one cable mentioned the Mammadovs’ link to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In 2013, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project investigated the Mammadov family’s corruption and published well-documented exposés. Six months before the hotel announcement, Foreign Policy ran an article titled “The Corleones of the Caspian,” which suggested that the Mammadovs had exploited Ziya’s position as Transportation Minister to make their fortunes.

Alan Garten, the Trump Organization lawyer, did not deny that there was corruption involved in the project. “I’m not going to sit here and defend the Mammadovs,” he said. But, from a legal standpoint, he argued, the Trump Organization was blameless. In his opinion, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act doesn’t apply to the Baku deal, even if corruption occurred. “We didn’t own it,” he said of the hotel. “We had no equity. We didn’t control the project. The flow of funds is in the wrong direction.” He added, “We did not pay any money to anyone. Therefore, it could not be a violation of the F.C.P.A.”

“No, that’s just wrong,” Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School, who specializes in the F.C.P.A., said. “You can’t go into business deals in Azerbaijan assuming that you are immune from the F.C.P.A.” She added, “Nor can you escape liability by looking the other way. The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag—the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”

Tillipman explained that the F.C.P.A. defines corruption as “the payment of money or anything of value” to a foreign official... Tillipman, along with several other F.C.P.A. experts, told me that the Trump Organization had clearly provided things of value in the Baku deal: its famous brand, its command of the luxury market, its extensive technical advice.

American companies must insure that they are not receiving funds that originated with any sanctioned entity. Ignorance is not a defense, especially if there is ample warning that a foreign partner could have a link to such an entity. Most firms, upon hearing of even a slight chance of Iranian involvement, conduct due diligence that is much more extensive than what is typical for F.C.P.A. compliance. Erich Ferrari, an attorney who specializes in sanctions-related legal cases, said that before the Trump Organization cashed any checks it should have been certain of “the source of the funds”—“not only the bank it was remitted from but how the Mammadovs actually earned the money they paid.” He said of the Baku deal, “It takes a lot to shock a lawyer, but I’ve had very few clients do so little due diligence.

To this day, the Trump Organization has not provided satisfying answers to the most basic questions about the Baku deal: (including) whether the Mammadovs used their political power to benefit themselves and the Trump Organization; and whether the Mammadovs used money obtained from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to fund the Trump Tower Baku.

More than a dozen lawyers with experience in F.C.P.A. prosecution expressed surprise at the Trump Organization’s seemingly lax approach to vetting its foreign partners. But, when I asked a former Trump Organization executive if the Baku deal had seemed unusual, he laughed. “No deal there seems unusual, as long as a check is attached,” he said.

Next up: we head east to another sleazy Trump project steeped in corruption, money-laundering and a country's shadiest characters-- Señor Trumpanzee tries his luck in Batumi.

Why Trump Tower Baku Suddenly Disappeared From Trump's Website

Do the Trump family's shady business dealings with criminal elements throughout the world, jeopardize American national security? And was this too complicated and vaguely abstract for the mainstream media to dig into during the election campaign? His tweets yesterday about separating himself from his business is utterly meaningless.

It's no secret that the head of the CIA, John Brennan, warned Trump that sabotaging the nuclear deal with Iran, cozying up to Putin and reinstating forms of interrogation considered torture, are policies that would be bad for America. Brennan took his complaints public, during a BBC interview, calling some of Trump's stated plans "the height of folly" and predicting "disastrous" outcomes.

Less known, however, is that Trump was quietly warned by American intelligence officials that he absolutely had to cut off his business relationship with Azerbaijan's Mammadov clan, the most dangerous and criminal players in the Caucuses. Last June, I was in Azerbaijan and did some writing about Trump Tower in Baku, which had opened and then closed down within days as the entire country decided as one to boycott it. The combination of Trump's anti-Muslim pronouncements and the toxicity of his criminal partners was too much for Azerbaijan society to stomach.

One of the mainstays of Azerbaijan's kleptocratic regime, Transportation Minister Ziya Mammadov, who went from a lowly railway worker to a billionaire/Mafioso, owns a lot of the country. His son, Anar, is a shady character and a perfect fit for the Trump family. It was only a matter of time before they found each other, which they did when Anar decided to rent Trump's name for his glitzy new hotel. He paid Trump between $2.5 and $2.8 million for the right to slap "Trump Tower" on his building and to get some "consultations" from Ivanka. In November, 2014, the Trump Organization announced that Trump Tower Baku was part of it's hotel empire and The Donald himself boasted (the same canned bullshit he spouts whenever anyone pays him for an endorsement for a hotel) that "Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku represents the unwavering standard of excellence of The Trump Organization and our involvement in only the best global development projects. When we open in 2015, visitors and residents will experience a luxurious property unlike anything else in Baku-- it will be among the finest in the world." Ivanka added that "This incredible building reflects the highest level of luxury and refinement, with extraordinary architecture inspired by the Caspian Sea and sophisticated interiors that seamlessly blend contemporary style with timeless appeal. We are looking forward to bringing our unparalleled Trump services and amenities to Azerbaijan.”

It sort of opened. Trump's partner, Anar, has been described by U.S. diplomats as "notoriously corrupt" and as working to launder money for the Iranian military. The hotel hired a full staff and started renting rooms but never had a promised grand opening. Everyone in the Baku hotel industry knows someone who worked there... briefly.

Trump often talks of hiring the best people and surrounding himself with people he can trust. In practice, however, he and his executives have at times appeared to overlook details about the background of people he has chosen as business partners, such as whether they had dubious associations, had been convicted of crimes, faced extradition or inflated their resumes.

Ivanka does Baku

...In the Azerbaijani case, Garten said the Trump Organization had performed meticulous due diligence on the company's partners, but hadn't researched the allegations against the Baku partner's father because he wasn't a party to the deal.

"I've never heard that before," Garten said, when first asked about allegations of Iranian money laundering by the partner's father, which appeared in U.S. diplomatic cables widely available since they were leaked in 2010.

Garten subsequently said he was confident the minister alleged to be laundering Iranian funds, Ziya Mammadov, had no involvement in his son's holding company, even though some of the son's major businesses regularly partnered with the transportation ministry and were founded while the son was in college overseas. Ziya Mammadov did not respond to a telephone message the AP left with his ministry in Baku or to emails to the Azerbaijan Embassy in Washington.

Garten told the AP that Trump's company uses a third-party investigative firm, which he did not identify, that specializes in background intelligence gathering and searches global watch lists, warrant lists and sanctions lists maintained by the United Nations, Interpol and others.

...Any American contemplating a business venture in Azerbaijan faces a risk: "endemic public corruption," as the State Department puts it. Much of that money flows from the oil and gas industries, but the State Department also considers the country to be a waypoint for terrorist financiers, Iranian sanctions-busters and Afghan drug lords.

The environment is a risky one for any business venture seeking to avoid violating U.S. penalties imposed against Iran or anti-bribery laws under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

...Garten said the Trump Organization had performed background screening on all those involved in the deal and was confident Mammadov's father played no role in the project.

Experts on Azerbaijan were mystified that Trump or anyone else could reach that conclusion.

Anar Mammadov is widely viewed by diplomats and nongovernmental organizations as a transparent stand-in for the business interests of his father. Anar's business has boomed with regular help from his father's ministry, receiving exclusive government contracts, a near monopoly on Baku's taxi business and even a free fleet of autobuses.

"These are not business people acting on their own-- you're dealing with daddy," said Richard Kauzlarich, a U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s who went on to work under the Director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush administration.

"Whatever the Trump people thought they were doing, that wasn't reality," Kauzlarich said.

Anar Mammadov, who is believed to be 35, has said in a series of interviews that he founded Garant Holdings' predecessor-- which has arms in transportation, construction, banking, telecommunications and manufacturing-- in 2000, when he would have been 19. Anar received his bachelor's degree in 2003 and a master's in business administration in 2005-- both from a university in London.

Mammadov's statement that he founded the business in 2000 appeared in a magazine produced by a research firm in partnership with the Azerbaijani government. In other forums, he has said he started the business in 2005, though several of its key subsidiaries predate that period.

Now all the employees have been laid off and everyone around Baku says the Mammadovs want to wait a little while for people to forget the Trump taint before they re-brand the building and re-open it as something else-- anything else... even a Motel 6 would be a better bet than something related to Donald Trump at this moment. The stench attached to his name and his brand isn't going to wash off quickly, especially not in a highly educated, secular Muslim-majority country like Azerbaijan.

After Trump was declared the winner of the election, U.S. intelligence officials told him he had to break off his business relationship with the Mammadovs and Trump Tower Baku has been unceremoniously "disappeared" from the company website, though not before Ivanka offered her Facebook fans a mini-tour of Baku from her window while she was there (October, 2014). This is Trump's business model-- hooking up with notorious criminals in off-the-beaten path places that few people back home know anything about. The Mammadov are viewed by U.S. intelligence as not just corrupt and criminal but also in league with Iran and any terrorist organizations or drug operations with some money to spend.

Asserting that Ziya Mammadov lets Anar run the family's criminal enterprises would be like Trump claiming Barron and Donald, Jr. (Fredo) run the Trump Organization now

Trump's Name Is Even Too Toxic For Azerbaijan, One Of The World's Most Corrupt Nations

I just got back from my first visit to Azerbaijan. I never expected to find such a wonderful place but it reminded me of a wealthier and more modern/Western Turkey. It's a little smaller than Maine and a little bigger than South Carolina with just over ten million inhabitants, more than New Jersey or Michigan and just about the same number as North Carolina. The rap on the country is that it's very wealthy but that all the wealth is concentrated in a few families' hands, cronies of the forever president, Ilham Aliyev, who first came to power in 2003 when his pop, Heydar Aliyev, died. The elder Aliyev had been a former First Secretary of the Azerbaijani Communist Party, a member of the Soviet Politburo and of the KGB before deposing Azerbaijan's first democratically-elected president Abulfaz Elchibey, and taking over.

Before that unpleasantness, Azerbaijan was the world's first Muslim-majority secular state and parliamentary democracy. That was before being overrun by the Soviets in 1920, Lenin saying he was sorry but the Soviets needed the oil. Azerbaijan lived under the Soviet yoke until it declared independence in 1991, as the Soviet Union was crumbling. Now it's a rich little country and Baku, the modern, bustling capital, looks-- architecturally-- like a cross between Paris and Dubai. And into this mix waddled Donald Trump a couple years ago.He smelled the opportunities inherent in one of the world's most corrupt countries a hemisphere away.

One of the mainstays of the kleptocratic regime, Transportation Minister, Ziya Mammadov, who went from a lowly railway worker to a billionaire/Mafioso, owns a lot of Azerbaijan. His son, Anar, is a shady character and a perfect fit for The Donald. It was only a matter of time before they found each other, which they did when Anar decided to rent Trump's name for his glitzy new hotel. He paid Trump between $2.5 and $2.8 million for the right to slap "Trump Tower" on his building and to get some "consultations" from Ivanka. In November, 2014, the Trump Organization announced that Trump Tower Baku was part of it's hotel empire and The Donald himself boasted that "Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku represents the unwavering standard of excellence of The Trump Organization and our involvement in only the best global development projects. When we open in 2015, visitors and residents will experience a luxurious property unlike anything else in Baku-- it will be among the finest in the world." Ivanka added that "This incredible building reflects the highest level of luxury and refinement, with extraordinary architecture inspired by the Caspian Sea and sophisticated interiors that seamlessly blend contemporary style with timeless appeal. We are looking forward to bringing our unparalleled Trump services and amenities to Azerbaijan.”

It sort of opened. Trump's partner, Anar, has been described by U.S. diplomats as "notoriously corrupt" and as working to launder money for the Iranian military. The hotel hired a full staff and started renting rooms but never had a promised grand opening. Everyone in the Baku hotel industry knows someone who worked there... briefly.

Trump often talks of hiring the best people and surrounding himself with people he can trust. In practice, however, he and his executives have at times appeared to overlook details about the background of people he has chosen as business partners, such as whether they had dubious associations, had been convicted of crimes, faced extradition or inflated their resumes.

...In the Azerbaijani case, Garten said the Trump Organization had performed meticulous due diligence on the company's partners, but hadn't researched the allegations against the Baku partner's father because he wasn't a party to the deal.

"I've never heard that before," Garten said, when first asked about allegations of Iranian money laundering by the partner's father, which appeared in U.S. diplomatic cables widely available since they were leaked in 2010.

Garten subsequently said he was confident the minister alleged to be laundering Iranian funds, Ziya Mammadov, had no involvement in his son's holding company, even though some of the son's major businesses regularly partnered with the transportation ministry and were founded while the son was in college overseas. Ziya Mammadov did not respond to a telephone message the AP left with his ministry in Baku or to emails to the Azerbaijan Embassy in Washington.

Garten told the AP that Trump's company uses a third-party investigative firm, which he did not identify, that specializes in background intelligence gathering and searches global watch lists, warrant lists and sanctions lists maintained by the United Nations, Interpol and others.

...Any American contemplating a business venture in Azerbaijan faces a risk: "endemic public corruption," as the State Department puts it. Much of that money flows from the oil and gas industries, but the State Department also considers the country to be a waypoint for terrorist financiers, Iranian sanctions-busters and Afghan drug lords.

The environment is a risky one for any business venture seeking to avoid violating U.S. penalties imposed against Iran or anti-bribery laws under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

...Garten said the Trump Organization had performed background screening on all those involved in the deal and was confident Mammadov's father played no role in the project.

Experts on Azerbaijan were mystified that Trump or anyone else could reach that conclusion.

Anar Mammadov is widely viewed by diplomats and nongovernmental organizations as a transparent stand-in for the business interests of his father. Anar's business has boomed with regular help from his father's ministry, receiving exclusive government contracts, a near monopoly on Baku's taxi business and even a free fleet of autobuses.

"These are not business people acting on their own-- you're dealing with daddy," said Richard Kauzlarich, a U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s who went on to work under the Director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush administration.

"Whatever the Trump people thought they were doing, that wasn't reality," Kauzlarich said.

Anar Mammadov, who is believed to be 35, has said in a series of interviews that he founded Garant Holdings' predecessor-- which has arms in transportation, construction, banking, telecommunications and manufacturing-- in 2000, when he would have been 19. Anar received his bachelor's degree in 2003 and a master's in business administration in 2005-- both from a university in London.

Mammadov's statement that he founded the business in 2000 appeared in a magazine produced by a research firm in partnership with the Azerbaijani government. In other forums, he has said he started the business in 2005, though several of its key subsidiaries predate that period.

Now all the employees have been laid off and everyone around Baku says the Mammadovs want to wait a little while for people to forget the Trump taint before they re-brand the building and re-open it as something else-- anything else... even a Motel 6 would be a better bet than something related to Donald Trump at this moment. The stench attached to his name and his brand isn't going to wash off quickly, especially not in a highly educated, secular Muslim-majority country like Azerbaijan. Want to help save America from Trump and Trumpism? Tap the thermometer:

The Businesstrumpanzee... And American National Security

I bet there were a lot of pissed-off Republicans who read the Daniel Larison piece in the American Conservative this week, Trump's Plunder Doctrine. This wasn't about Señor Trumpanzee's personal business empire, but about how he thinks the U.S. government should be run-- the notorious, and oft repeated, "take the oil" notion. Trump doesn't understand the concept of international law, let alone why the U.S. participated in the Hague Convention and the Geneva Conventions that provide guidelines on the rights and duties of occupying powers which include the protection of civilians, treatment of prisoners of war, and property rights both before and after the occupation is in effect. For example, "the confiscation of private property by the occupant is prohibited. Also, "the destruction or seizure of enemy property is prohibited, unless absolutely required by military necessity during the conduct of hostilities."

Larison starts by pointing out Bruce Riedel's Daily Beast post about Trump's proposed seizure of Iraq's oil, which he wrote would "reinvigorate the global jihad, and it would disgrace our fundamental values as a nation... [and guaranteeing] the Republican Party would own the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history."

Trump’s "take the oil" rhetoric is notable for being one of the few consistent foreign policy positions he has held over the years. It unites both his support for military interventions in the region (so that we could then take the oil) and his later criticism of how those interventions were conducted (they were failures because we didn’t take the oil). He makes the same complaint about the Libyan and Iraq wars, and if his "take the oil" idea were put into practice it would guarantee open-ended wars in both countries, each of which would probably be more costly to the U.S. than the previous two interventions put together. It’s a thoroughly unjust idea, and it would be completely illegal to do, but more than that it is a phenomenally stupid policy to favor. It should be a reminder that there is no aggressive policy too reckless or provocative that Trump wouldn’t support so long as the U.S. can extract payment or resources along the way, and it tells us that acquiring plunder is what he thinks U.S. foreign policy is for.

Like many of his fanboys [refresh your memory with the video just above], Trump is a primitive and backward character, who has channeled much of his savagery, until recently, into enriching himself at the expense of anyone and everyone he comes in contact with. Behind the brutal exposé in the new issue of Newsweek, How The Trump Organization's Foreign Business TIies Could Upend U.S. National Security is the observation that many have made that Trump is, at heart, a barely civilized predator. I noticed when I was in Azerbaijan recently that, although Trump Tower had completely shut down within a week of opening because of the toxicity of his name, he had aligned himself with one of the powerful and blatantly corrupt local bandit/mafia clans, widely hated throughout the country and seen as vicious oppressors. Trump is allied with characters like this across the globe. In the Newsweek cover story, Kurt Eichenwald frets, sensibly, that Trump will "choose to be the most conflicted president in American history, one whose business interests will constantly jeopardize the security of the United States... A close examination by Newsweek of the Trump Organization, including confidential interviews with business executives and some of its international partners, reveals an enterprise with deep ties to global financiers, foreign politicians and even criminals, although there is no evidence the Trump Organization has engaged in any illegal activities. It also reveals a web of contractual entanglements that could not be just canceled. If Trump moves into the White House and his family continues to receive any benefit from the company, during or even after his presidency, almost every foreign policy decision he makes will raise serious conflicts of interest and ethical quagmires."

[T]he Trump family rakes in untold millions of dollars from the Trump Organization every year. Much of that comes from deals with international financiers and developers, many of whom have been tied to controversial and even illegal activities. None of Trump’s overseas contractual business relationships examined by Newsweek were revealed in his campaign’s financial filings with the Federal Election Commission, nor was the amount paid to him by his foreign partners. (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for the names of all foreign entities in partnership or contractually tied to the Trump Organization.) Trump’s financial filings also indicate he is a shareholder or beneficiary of several overseas entities, including Excel Venture LLC in the French West Indies and Caribusiness Investments SRL, based in the Dominican Republic, one of the world’s tax havens.

Trump’s business conflicts with America’s national security interests cannot be resolved so long as he or any member of his family maintains a financial interest in the Trump Organization during a Trump administration, or even if they leave open the possibility of returning to the company later. The Trump Organization cannot be placed into a blind trust, an arrangement used by many politicians to prevent them from knowing their financial interests; the Trump family is already aware of who their overseas partners are and could easily learn about any new ones.

Many foreign governments retain close ties to and even control of companies in their country, including several that already are partnered with the Trump Organization. Any government wanting to seek future influence with President Trump could do so by arranging for a partnership with the Trump Organization, feeding money directly to the family or simply stashing it away inside the company for their use once Trump is out of the White House. This is why, without a permanent departure of the entire Trump family from their company, the prospect of legal bribery by overseas powers seeking to influence American foreign policy, either through existing or future partnerships, will remain a reality throughout a Trump presidency.

Moreover, the identity of every partner cannot be discovered if Trump reverses course and decided to release his taxes. The partnerships are struck with some of the more than 500 entities disclosed in Trump’s financial disclosure forms; each of those entities has its own records that would have to be revealed for a full accounting of all of Trump’s foreign entanglements to be made public.

The problem of overseas conflicts emerges from the nature of Trump’s business in recent years. Much of the public believes Trump is a hugely successful developer, a television personality and a failed casino operator. But his primary business deals for almost a decade have been a quite different endeavor. The GOP nominee is essentially a licensor who leverages his celebrity into streams of cash from partners from all over the world. The business model for Trump’s company started to change around 2007, after he became the star of NBC’s The Apprentice, which boosted his national and international fame. Rather than constructing Trump’s own hotels, office towers and other buildings, much of his business involved striking deals with overseas developers who pay his company for the right to slap his name on their buildings. (The last building constructed by Trump with his name on it is the Trump-SoHo hotel and condominium project, completed in 2007.)

...The idea of selling the Trump brand name to overseas developers emerged as a small piece of the company’s business in the late 1990s. At that time, two executives from Daewoo Engineering and Construction met with Trump at his Manhattan offices to propose paying him for the right to use his name on a new complex under development, according to former executives from the South Korean company. Daewoo had already worked with the Trump Organization to build the Trump World Tower, which is close to the Manhattan headquarters of the United Nations. The former Daewoo executives said Trump was at first skeptical, but in 1999 construction began on the South Korean version of Trump World, six condominium properties in Seoul and two neighboring cities. According to the two former executives, the Trump Organization received an annual fee of approximately $8 million a year.

Shortly after the deal was signed, the parent company of Daewoo Engineering and Construction, the Daewoo Group, collapsed into bankruptcy amid allegations of what proved to be a $43 billion accounting fraud. The chairman of the Daewoo Group, Kim Woo Choong, fled to North Korea; he returned in 2005, was arrested and convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to 10 years in prison. According to the two former Daewoo executives, a reorganization of Daewoo after its bankruptcy required revisions in the Trump contract, but the Trump Organization still remains allied with Daewoo Engineering and Construction.

This relationship puts Trump’s foreign policies in conflict with his financial interests. Earlier this year, he said South Korea should plan to shoulder its own military defense rather than relying on the United States, including the development of nuclear weapons. (He later denied making that statement, which was video-recorded.) One of the primary South Korean companies involved in nuclear energy, a key component in weapons development, is Trump’s partner-- Daewoo Engineering and Construction. It would potentially get an economic windfall if the United States adopted policies advocated by Trump.

Eichenwald went on to delineate serious conflicts of interest in India, Turkey, the Kurds, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Ukraine, all with shady characters. Let me just use Azerbaijan as an example, although Eichenwald doesn't seem too be aware that Trump Tower Baku was completed, opened briefly and was quickly shut down and disgraced and sits like a big monstrosity in the middle of the city. What he does get right is Trump's relationship with the criminal clan he went into partnership with.

Another business relationship that could raise concerns about conflicts involves Azerbaijan, a country the State Department said in an official report was infused with “corruption and predatory behavior by politically connected elites.” According to Trump’s financial filings, the Republican nominee is the president of two entities called OT Marks Baku LLC and DT Marks Baku Manaaina Member Corp. Those were established as part of deals the Trump Organization made last year for a real estate project in the country’s capital. The partner in the deal is Garant Holding, which is controlled by Anar Mammadov, the son of the country’s transportation minister, Ziya Mammadov. According to American diplomatic cables made public in 2010, the United States possessed information that led diplomats to believe Ziya Mammadov laundered money for the Iranian military. No formal charges have been brought against either Mammadov.

Once again, however, this exposes potential conflicts between Trump’s business connections and national security. While the development is currently on hold, it has not been canceled, meaning that Anar Mammadov could soon be paying millions of dollars to Trump. If American intelligence concludes, or has already concluded, that his business partner’s father has been aiding Iran by laundering money for the military, will Trump’s foreign policy decisions on Iran and Azerbaijan be based on the national security of the United States or the financial security of Donald Trump?

Do you follow @LOLGOP on twitter? I do; he's good. His name is Jason Sattler and he did an OpEd yesterday for USAToday calling for the shutting down of the Trump Organization. He notes the widespread clamor to separate the Clintons from the Clinton Foundation and wonders why no one in the media doing all that clamoring calls for a Trump Organization divorce from anyone named Trump, despite the likelihood that Trump would be, if he won the presidency, "the most indebted major party candidate for president in U.S. history, while also being the least transparent nominee since Watergate."

Voters still have no idea how much self-proclaimed billionaire Trump wants to cut his own taxes. Without his tax returns, which he has promised and failed to release two dozen times since 2011, voters have no idea if the Republican nominee for president even pays any taxes.

Americans have more information than that about the size of his … hands.

We do know Trump’s companies represent a vast array of properties, investments and licenses around the world. And these businesses also appear to hold at least $650 million in debt to a variety of lenders, including Goldman Sachs, the Bank of China and Deutsche Bank, which is probably not German for “America First.”

Despite the reportedly huge debt and Trump’s six corporate bankruptcies, we have to assume the exclusive goal of these ventures is profit-- at least for him. He received millions in compensation as his casinos went broke.

The Trump Organization’s golf courses, resorts and various other holdings don’t get in involved with anything as sordid as saving the lives of AIDS patients. Even so, anyone who cares about the office of the presidency should be calling for Trump and his family to completely divest from his business interests should he be elected president.

The candidate's three oldest children, Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr., are all executive vice presidents of the Trump Organization. He has suggested that they will take over day-to-day operations of his company, shunning the “blind trust” that nearly all modern presidents have relied on to avoid the appearance of any conflict of interest.Instead of avoiding suspicions, Trump is-- as usual-- encouraging them.

But even if it's strangers instead of his kids running his business, it’s impossible to separate Trump’s interests from the Trump Organization.

“To put your identity into a blind trust is a little bit difficult,” government professor Andrew Rudalevige told NPR.

Trump’s identity is literally his business.

Much of the value of the conglomerate is immediately tied not only to Trump’s name but also to Trump’s mood. In a 2009 deposition, he explained that his net worth “goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings.”

With his wealth and his “feelings” on the line, American policies will become inextricable from the president’s business strategy. Would a country win favor from the most powerful nation in the world by propping up Trump businesses? Would the president avoid conflict with a nation that offers him sweet tax credits?

How many people believe that a fortunate son whose entire life has been about leaving his even more fortunate kids a conglomerate larger than his parents left him-- and now eliminating any taxes they might pay on their inheritance-- would put the nation’s interests over his own?

Probably about as many as those who believe that Mexico will pay for Trump’s imaginary border wall-- 13% in a recent poll.