Category Archives: Gangs and Crimes

DNC: Tom Perez/Keith Ellison, DemRulz

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Politico: New Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez and Deputy Chair Keith Ellison are taking their buddy show on the road.

Starting later this month, the pair will embark on what they are calling a “Democratic Turnaround Tour” that hits a collection of states that the party lost in 2016 and where there are ongoing races. The first stops, beginning March 24, are in Detroit and Flint, Michigan — where Hillary Clinton was the first Democrat to lose since 1988.

That trip will be followed by visits to Texas — where Democrats are looking to make inroads — and to the states that will hold the two gubernatorial races in 2017, New Jersey and Virginia.

Perez and Ellison are set to announce the tour on Wednesday night, less than two weeks after the former Labor secretary won the chairmanship and named the Minnesota congressman his deputy in Atlanta.

After a four-month long campaign that devolved into a messy proxy war between the establishment wing of the party and the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, the two have gone out of their way to appear together.
It started with a joint press conference following Perez’s victory — in which they were wearing each other’s campaign pins — and continued at President Donald Trump’s first address to Congress, at which Perez was Ellison’s guest.

Now, their push to unify the party is heading to some of the states most vital to the Democrats’ comeback strategy.

When they are traveling, the duo will meet with local party members to talk about the importance of local organization — a key point in both of their campaigns for the chairmanship. But they will also push for Democrats to convey a positive economic message to respond to Trump, not simply an anti-Trump one like the party’s prevailing push during the 2016 campaign.

*** Per Wikipedia:

Perez announced his candidacy for Chair of the Democratic National Committee on December 15, 2016.[158] He argued that the party needs to go to the suburbs, the exburbs and rural America, and talk to people.[159] Perez promised not to take money from federal lobbyists, foreign nationals, or current Labor Department employees.[160] His candidacy was endorsed by former Vice President Joe Biden and other Obama administration officials.[161]

On February 25, 2017 Perez was elected DNC chair.[162][163] Perez won on the second ballot with 235 votes, beating nearest rival Representative Keith Ellison who earned 200 votes.[162] After winning the election, Perez named Ellison as Deputy Chairman of the DNC.[161] Perez is the first Latino and the first Dominican-American to chair the Democratic National Committee.[164]

*** DeRay gets another paying gig, he is among friends.

Image result for deray mckesson blm dnc  BET

 

Shady Globalism Hurts Personally When it Involves Water

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We witnessed the Flint, Michigan water crisis, where it was just safe to drink and few cared until they did. The water crisis goes far beyond Michigan where drinking water and water for showers, cooking and washing clothes is just not safe. Gray or used water is scooped to flush toilets. Where you ask? California and it was not due to the 5 year drought. The crisis goes beyond California, it is in Arizona and the corn/wheat belt in the middle of the country.

Really? How does globalism fit into the issue?

Big corporations, Wall Street and Hedge Funds as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are part of the crisis.

Individual farmers and small agriculture business has faded away, sold out to big Agri-corporations where offers to buy the land is a cover as the water and aquifers are more valuable. Water is the new gold or oil. Urban and suburban areas, just plain people are paying the price to save water for the sake of water to be available for bigger operations. In fact it is so bad, domestic and foreign interests are pumping water in one location and transferring via privately owned pipe to locations up to and perhaps more than 100 miles away.

When it comes to the EPA controlling water access and use, the agency was not wrong but it was actually wrong for reasons far beyond the headlines. The EPA is protecting, controlling and managing water not for the individual but rather for Wall Street firms and foreign investments.

The EPA is not the only agency, it includes the Department of Agriculture. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue has not yet been confirmed however Scott Pruitt has been confirmed as Secretary of the EPA.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia
Exports of U.S. food and agricultural products to Saudi Arabia reached a record $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2014. Major exports include coarse grains, soybeans, dairy products, and vegetable oils.

In September 2012, the United States signed a trade and investment framework agreement (TIFA) with the Gulf Cooperation Council (which includes Saudi Arabia, as well as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain) to continue expanding and liberalizing trade relations. More here.

Trade is a good thing for sure for farmers but the little guy is shut out of the trade system due to access of water and volume. The United States is feeding the Middle East.

The Office of Agricultural Affairs (OAA) is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), which has 93 offices covering 171 countries

OAA promotes and facilitates exports of U.S. agricultural products to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

OAA promotes exports of U.S. agricultural products by:

  • Conducting and participating in market development activities with non-profit U.S. high value food product and commodity trade associations.
  • Hosting trade promotion events.
  • Identifying possible opportunities for U.S. products, and placing potential importers in contact with U.S. exporters.
  • Recruiting representatives of Saudi food and agricultural product importers to attend major regional and U.S. based food and agricultural shows.
  • Providing match making and trade lead services.

OAA facilitates the export of U.S. agricultural products by:

  • Reporting on market opportunities and conditions.
  • Resolving trade policy issues by working with the governments of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and with the Gulf Standardization Organization (GSO).
  • Counseling and informing exporters and importers of U.S. agricultural products.
  • Developing and maintaining contacts in the food, logistics and agriculture sectors.
  • Coordinating workshops, technical seminars, and other events with non-profit U.S. commodity trade associations and other organizations.

***

The Middle Eastern kingdom, Saudi Arabia, needs hay for its 170,000 cows. So, it’s buying up farmland for the water-chugging crop in the drought-stricken American Southwest. 14,000 acres to be exact. Almarai Co. bought land in January that roughly doubled its holdings in California’s Palo Verde Valley, an area that enjoys first dibs on water from the Colorado River. The company also acquired a large tract near Vicksburg, Arizona, becoming a powerful economic force in a region that has fewer well-pumping restrictions than other parts of the state.

“Southern California and Arizona have good water rights. Who knows if that will change, but that’s the way things are now,” said Daniel Putnam, an agronomist at the University of California, Davis.

Over the last decade, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates emerged as significant buyers of American hay as their governments moved to curb water use. Together they accounted for 10 percent of U.S. exports of alfalfa and other grasses last year.

The land purchases signal that Almarai doesn’t just want to buy hay; it wants to grow. And it’s not the only Arab-owned Gulf company to take that approach.

Al Dahra ACX Global Inc., a top U.S. hay exporter based in Bakersfield, California, is owned by Al Dahra Agriculture Co. of United Arab Emirates. It farms extensively in Southern California and Arizona and, according to its website, plans to add 7,500 acres in the United States for alfalfa and other crops. The exporter packages crops grown across the West at its two plants in California and one in Washington state.

Most of the farms that Arab companies own worldwide are in developing nations. For instance, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has holdings in Latin America and Africa.

But part of the kingdom’s long-term food security strategy means investing in higher-cost countries with greater political stability, said John Lawton, owner of Agriculture Technology Co., a farming company in Saudi Arabia.  More here from CSMonitor.

*** What about household use of water that is not drinkable?

The problem is that the groundwater it is using is unsafe for nearly 800,000 residents, according to the state’s water resources control board, because of longtime contamination from nitrates and arsenic.

That’s meant less drinkable water in California’s struggle to survive more than three years of severely dry weather.

“Most areas affected by contamination don’t have surface water supplies so they have to find new groundwater sources,” said Kurt Souza, a branch chief of the division of drinking water at the California State Water Resources Control Board.

“But that’s not always easy to do,” Souza added. “Sometimes you can find new ground locations for water and sometimes you can’t.”

The lack of rain and subsequent heavy demand on ground wells—which are also facing supply problems—is making a bad situation worse, said Sara Aminzadeh, executive director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, a statewide advocacy group for safe water. According to the state water resources study, unsafe levels of arsenic are the top contaminant in groundwater supplies, followed by nitrates.

Nitrates are most often traced to farming chemicals and animal waste. Arsenic is found naturally in soil and rock in much of the world and seeps into groundwater.

Chronic low exposure to arsenic has been traced to respiratory problems in children and adults as well as having links to diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers of the skin. More here from NBC, video included.

For more confusion on the shadiness of the whole thing, here are a few additional items. If it is going on in California, perhaps we need to investigate and ask the same questions in other farming regions of the country. Then perhaps we need deeper research out of the EPA and the Department of Agriculture where most of this gained additional traction and success under the Obama administration.

By the way, it was never really about that pesky Delta Smelt fish that the other environmentalists were trying to protect. That was a cover story.

  • The Monterey Amendment: Monterey Amendment ended up in court, challenged by the Planning and Conservation League, Citizens Planning Association of Santa Barbara County, and a small SWP contractor, the Plumas County Flood Control and Water Conservation District.In 2000, a state appeals court agreed with the challengers that the Environmental Impact Report for the amendment did not analyze provisions for completion of the SWP or permanent water shortages.

    In 2003, a settlement was reached that called for preparation of a new EIR, more detailed reporting of the project’s actual delivery capability and public participation on any project amendments.

    DWR in 2007 released a draft EIR, which discusses the project alternatives, growth inducement, water supply reliability, as well as potential areas of controversy and concern. The final EIR was released in 2009. DWR decided to continue to operate the SWP under the existing Monterey Amendment to the SWP long-term water supply contracts, including the Kern Water Bank transfer, and under the Settlement Agreement entered in PCL v. DWR. DWR’s decision was challenged by two groups of plaintiffs on issues relating to the adequacy of the EIR and the validity of the Monterey Amendment. The cases are currently being heard by the trial court. Final resolution of the issues is likely to take a number of years.

  • Roll International Corporation/Kern Water Bank: The Wonderful Company LLC, formerly known as Roll Global, is a private corporation based in Los Angeles, California. With revenues of over $4.8 billion,[1] it functions as a holding company for Stewart and Lynda Resnick, and as such is a vehicle for their personal investments in a number of businesses. The company currently counts as business divisions the following brands: flower delivery service Teleflora, juice company POM Wonderful, bottled water company FIJI Water, Wonderful Pistachios and Wonderful Almonds (formerly Paramount Farms), Wonderful Citrus (formerly Paramount Citrus), sea freight company Neptune Pacific Line, JUSTIN Vineyards and Winery, pest control company Suterra, and in-house marketing agency Wonderful Agency
  • Paramount Farming: Paramount Farming Company, LLC produces almonds, pistachios, and pomegranates in California. It also offers pomegranate, mango, tangerine, blueberry, and cherry juices. The company was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Bakersfield, California. Paramount Farming Company, LLC operates as a subsidiary of Roll International Corporation.
  • Westside Mutual Water Co., LLC.
  • IN 2014, California will establish statewide management of water pumped from the ground, under legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Jerry Brown. This really limits household usage and benefits big farming entities.
  • California is sinking even faster than scientists had thought, new NASA satellite imagery shows. Some areas of the Golden State are sinking more than 2 inches (5.1 centimeters) per month, the imagery reveals. Though the sinking, called subsidence, has long been a problem in California, the rate is accelerating because the state’s extreme drought is fueling voracious groundwater pumping. California Sinking Faster Than Thought, Aquifers Could Permanently Shrink
    New NASA imagery reveals that parts of California are sinking at an astonishing rate, with some parts of the San Joaquin Valley sinking as much as 2 inches per month.

    Credit: Canadian Space Agency/NASA/JPL-Caltech

    Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 2:00 p.m. E.T.

    California is sinking even faster than scientists had thought, new NASA satellite imagery shows.

    Some areas of the Golden State are sinking more than 2 inches (5.1 centimeters) per month, the imagery reveals. Though the sinking, called subsidence, has long been a problem in California, the rate is accelerating because the state’s extreme drought is fueling voracious groundwater pumping. 

    “Because of increased pumping, groundwater levels are reaching record lows — up to 100 feet (30 meters) lower than previous records,” Mark Cowin, director of California’s Department of Water Resources, said in a statement. “As extensive groundwater pumping continues, the land is sinking more rapidly, and this puts nearby infrastructure at greater risk of costly damage.” [It’s Raining Spiders! The Weirdest Effects of California’s Drought]

    What’s more, this furious groundwater pumping could have long-term consequences. If the land shrinks too much, and for too long, it can permanently lose its ability to store groundwater, the researchers said.

    The state’s sinking isn’t new: California has long suffered from subsidence, and some parts are now a few dozen feet lower than they were in 1925, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

    But the state’s worst drought on record — 97 percent of the state is facing moderate to exceptional drought — has only accelerated the trend. To quantify this accelerated sinking, researchers at the Department of Water Resources and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, compared satellite imagery of California over time. Thanks to images taken from both satellites and airplanes using a remote-sensing technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), which uses radar to measure elevation differences, researchers can now map changes in the surface height of the ground with incredible precision. For the current study, the team stitched together imagery from Japan’s satellite-based Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar and Canada’s Earth Observation satellite Radarsat-2, as well as NASA’s airplane-based Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar.

    Certain hotspots are shrinking at an astonishing rate — regions of the Tulare Basin, which includes Fresno, sank 13 inches (33 cm) in just eight months, they found. The Sacramento Valley is sinking about 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) per month. And the California Aqueduct — an intricate network of pipes, canals and tunnels that funnels water from high in the Sierra Nevada mountains in northern and central California to Southern California — has sunk 12.5 inches (32 cm), and most of that was just in the past four months, according to the new study.

    The unquenchable thirst for groundwater in certain regions is largely a result of agriculture: Most of the state’s agricultural production resides in the fast-sinking regions around some of the state’s most endangered river systems — the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers. As the heat and lack of rainfall have depleted surface-water supplies, farmers have turned to groundwater to keep their crops afloat.

    Subsidence isn’t just an aesthetic problem; bridges and highways can sink and crack in dangerous ways, and flood-control structures can be compromised. In the San Joaquin Valley, the sinking Earth has destroyed the outer shell around thousands of privately drilled wells.

    “Groundwater acts as a savings account to provide supplies during drought, but the NASA report shows the consequences of excessive withdrawals as we head into the fifth year of historic drought,” Corwin said. “We will work together with counties, local water districts, and affected communities to identify ways to slow the rate of subsidence and protect vital infrastructure such as canals, pumping stations, bridges and wells.”

     

 

 

Maritime Traffic, Pirates, Smuggling and Dark Beacons

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Maritime traffic is hardly considered a top priority and it should be. For illicit activities on the high seas, there is major intelligence value when it comes to smuggling and pirates.

Image result for gps maritime pirates cargo

— Israeli navy veteran Ami Daniel points at his computer screen and explains why the ship he was tracking should have been stopped and searched. It sailed near the Libyan port of Tobruk and waited four days more than a mile off the coast without ever docking, then moved west to Misrata, which it had never visited before.

Next came Greece, where it waited another four days offshore.

Whatever was on the ship — possibly drugs, weapons or people — likely eventually made its way to Europe’s shores, he said.

At a time of deep concern over migrant smuggling, Daniel said his company Windward has the ability to pick up such suspicious maritime behavior that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Ninety percent of the world’s trade is via the oceans, and ports simply cannot check even a fraction of all the containers. For that reason, they try to narrow it down with watch lists of ships.

But with turbulence in northern Africa and the collapse of Libya, smuggling networks have taken advantage of the situation while also becoming more sophisticated, Silvia Ciotti, head of the EuroCrime research body, explained.

And with the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees across the seas, resources in Europe have been stretched threadbare.

The same smugglers taking desperate migrants and refugees into Europe also take contraband goods, Ciotti said.

“One day it is drugs. One day it is weapons. They do not care,” she said. If a ship’s activities are unusual — turning off its radar or visiting an at-risk port — it will be flagged. More here for ToI.

Image result for gps maritime traffic

The company is Windward, a rather new company that did get an interesting investor, former CIA director, General David Petraeus.

Using what it calls activity-based intelligence, Windward, a five-year-old maritime data and analytics firm here, probes beyond the ship-tracking services available on today’s market to validate identities of ocean-going vessels.

It compares their patterns of behavior and past associations with other ships —even where they loaded or didn’t load in specific ports of call.

“Nobody knows who’s the real owner of 75 percent of the world’s vessels,” said Daniel. “The reason is, for business reasons, they are registered under various flags of convenience by a lawyer who has one share and nobody knows who’s on top of him.

“So the tools of looking at data bases or registries are great in theory, but not in practice.”

The same holds true, company executives here say, for the Automated Information System (AIS), satellite-supported tracking system initiated in recent years by the US Coast Guard and now required by ocean-going vessels and passenger ships. Specific findings from the report showed an increase in GPS manipulation of 59 percent over the past two years; that 55 percent of ships misreport their actual port of call for the majority of their voyage; that large cargo ships shut off AIS transmissions 24 percent longer than others; and that 19 percent of the ships that “go dark” are repeat offenders.

To illustrate this point, Windward conducted an analysis specifically for Defense News, in which the company employed “reverse engineering” of a known arms smuggling incident to highlight similarly suspicious behavior by a ship that managed to evade detection by law enforcement authorities.

Its baseline case was the Haddad, a 39-year-old, Bolivian-flagged cargo vessel that embarked from Iskenderun, Turkey, in early September. It was ultimately seized by Greek authorities south of Crete with a cache of some 5,000 shotguns and a half million rounds of undocumented ammunition.

Using the route plied by the 66-meter Haddad, which sailed along the Turkish coast en route to Libya before being stopped, Windward came up with a similar profile of another ship which, for a variety of legal and proprietary reasons, it preferred to call Vessel X.

Like the Haddad, Vessel X was more than 30 years old and around the same size, about 75 meters. It left the same Turkish port on Aug. 19 — less than a month prior to Haddad — bearing a flag of convenience, this one from the South Pacific island of Vanuatu.

A day later, Vessel X stopped in an area near the Turkish shore where there was no other port in the area or any other reason to stop at that location, company analysts found. More here from DefenseNews.

Meanwhile, pirating is back in the news.

Somali pirates just hijacked a commercial ship for the first time in five years

WaPo: In 2010 and 2011, groups of armed Somali men were hijacking merchant vessels off Somalia’s coast at an almost daily pace. Thousands of hostages of myriad nationalities were taken, and billions of dollars were lost on ransoms, damages and delayed shipments.

The crisis was so severe that a naval task force with more than two dozen vessels from European Union countries, the United States, China, Russia, India and Japan banded together to restore order to one of the world’s busiest shipping routes. They largely succeeded. In 2015, there were 17 pirate attacks near Somalia, down from 151 in 2011. Many of those attacks were on smaller fishing boats from nearby countries, mostly by disgruntled Somali fishermen, but not commercial ships.

Until Tuesday.

Somali officials acknowledged that the Aris 13, an oil tanker, had been escorted to the Somali coast by at least eight and perhaps as many as dozens of armed men on two small skiffs. Reports from organizations that monitor piracy could not conclusively identify which flag the ship was flying or where it was owned, but Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that eight of its nationals were on board as crew. The ship was on its way south to Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.

The attack originated in the Puntland region, which is semiautonomous. “The vessel’s captain reported to the company they were approached by two skiffs and that one of them could see armed personnel on board,” an unidentified Middle East-based official told the Associated Press. “The ship changed course quite soon after that report and is now anchored.”

The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet oversees anti-piracy efforts along Somalia’s coast. Concerns about piracy’s reemergence in the region have been growing in concurrence with greater exploitation of Somalia’s waters by foreigners engaged in illegal fishing. Deprived of a livelihood, some Somali fishermen have turned back to hijacking to get by.

Salad Nur, described as a “local elder” by the Associated Press, said that the men involved in Tuesday’s hijacking had been searching for a commercial vessel for days on the open water. “Foreign fishermen destroyed their livelihoods and deprived them of proper fishing,” Nur said.

Piracy is also on the rise on the other side of Africa. Armed groups based along Nigeria’s coast have made that region the most dangerous for seafarers. That coast is also a major oil shipping route. Now that oil prices have dropped, pirates there have taken to kidnapping crew members for ransom rather than siphoning off oil, as the abductions have proved more lucrative.

DoJ: Will AG Jeff Sessions Allow Extradition of Ricardo Martinelli?

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September of 2016: Panama has sent the U.S. Department of State an extradition request for former President Ricardo Martinelli to be returned to the Central American nation, a spokesman for Panama’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

Martinelli, who is accused of using public money to spy illegally on more than 150 people, left Panama in January 2015 and is believed to be living in Miami.

The former president presided over an infrastructure boom and Latin America’s fastest economic growth in recent years but his administration was tainted by allegations of corruption. More here from Reuters.

But why should we care? Last year, a team of journalists broke the story regarding the Panama Papers and it seems some of that swamp water touches President Trump.

This is not meant to be a tattle-tale story but rather a post to brace for the next scandal propelled by media against this White House.

Brace yourself for this one.

January 2015: Miami Herald/ PANAMA CITY

When the United States rejected former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli’s request for spying equipment to eavesdrop, U.S. diplomats feared, on his political enemies, the former supermarket baron turned to another source: Israel.

Now scores of Panama’s political and social elite are learning that the eavesdropping program that Martinelli’s security team set in place sprawled into the most private aspects of their lives – including their bedrooms. Rather than national security, what appears to have driven the wiretapping was a surfeit of the seven deadly sins, particularly greed, pride, lust and envy.  

Nearly every day, targets of the wiretapping march to the prosecutors’ office to see what their dossiers contain, often emerging in distress. Martinelli, who left office in July, is facing a rising tide of outrage not only over the wiretapping, but also over reports of vast corruption. His personal secretary has left the country. The eavesdropping equipment has vanished. More here.

***

Trump’s Panama Problem

Ricardo Martinelli, the ex-president of Panama facing extradition on corruption charges, helped him launch his first international property.

By Anna Lenzer:

It was a big moment for Donald Trump.

On July 6, 2011, the future president was beaming as he celebrated the opening of his first international real-estate deal, the Ocean Club in Panama City, Panama. The flashy hotel-condo complex featured a 72-story tower that transformed the skyline of the city with its sail-shaped design. After a ceremony featuring dancers in traditional Panamanian dress, Trump stood at a podium, flanked by his two oldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, paused during his remarks, gently leaned over and offered a special thanks to Ricardo Martinelli, the president of Panama.“You’re my friend. Great honor.”

Standing next to Trump’s children, Martinelli smiled back. The white-haired, stocky president was flattered, proud of the fact that the complex had the potential to transform his small country into a destination for the rich and famous. As they both delivered their remarks that afternoon, the sky broke open and a torrential rain flooded the streets, turning the peninsula on which the complex stood into a “swamp island.” Trump and Martinelli had to ride out through the flooded streets in their separate chauffeured SUVs.

***

More than five years later, Trump has taken over the Oval Office and Martinelli is a fugitive from justice wanted on multiple corruption charges and investigations, ranging from allegedly helping to embezzle $45 million from a government school lunch program to insider trading to using public funds to spy on more than 150 political opponents, lawyers, doctors, and activists. But their paths could intertwine again very soon in what may be a thorny dilemma for the Trump administration. At the end of September, Panama’s Supreme Court asked the United States to extradite Martinelli, who left office in 2014 and now lives in exile in a luxury waterfront condo in Miami.

Panama City Skyline: Trump Ocean Club International Hotel & Tower under construction[Photo: Flickr user Bruce Dailey]

While the United States has codified policies to deny visas to foreign officials facing criminal charges in their home countries, and Trump’s recent executive order on immigration enforcement targets for removal individuals with even unresolved criminal charges, Martinelli entered the U.S. in 2015 on a visitor visa as the criminal investigations around him and his inner circle were tightening and has reportedly remained since.

Before fleeing Panama, Martinelli sat on the board of a bank that became the co-trustee for the Ocean Club, a role that left it in charge of managing funds coming in from rentals and sales, and of disbursing money to Trump, who gets millions in fees from the project. The Ocean Club has been Trump’s largest individual source of branding fees, reports the Economist, earning Trump “at least $50 million on the project on virtually zero investment,” reported the Washington Post in January.

Now, the extradition request highlights the potential conflicts of interest that have swirled around Trump: A decision that is usually made on the merits by career diplomats could be complicated by the president’s personal and business ties to Panama. Officials at the State Department could be inclined to approve the extradition, mindful of not antagonizing the current government of Panama, which exerts plenty of influence over the fate of a development that makes millions for the president’s family—or to decline the request out of their awareness of Martinelli’s support for the Ocean Club and his admiration and kind words for Trump.

How Global Deals Could Complicate Diplomacy

The Panama skyscraper was the first building outside of America to bear the Trump name, in a licensing and management deal with local development company Newland International Properties. Trump’s companies today “have business operations in at least 20 countries, with a particular focus on the developing world, including outposts in nations like India, Indonesia, and Uruguay,” according to the New York Times. An analysis of Trump’s global deals published on January 25 by the Washington Post found that the Trump name has been contracted out “to at least 50 different licensing or management deals.” As the Post explained, “for his international projects, he has done a majority of his work through licensing—where a developer who is liable for the actual cost and responsibility of the contract uses Trump’s name for their hotels. This allows Trump to spread his brand and image worldwide without actually being liable for the project.” (In addition to real estate projects, Trump has also licensed his name in branding deals for a variety of consumer products such as Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, and Trump Menswear.)

Trump has done branding deals ranging from a suite of private mansions in the United Arab Emirates, a luxury resort and golf course in Indonesia, a since-halted project in Azerbaijan that nevertheless earned him more than $2.5 million in fees, and a number of projects in India, where the Times found he had more projects in the works than anywhere else outside of North America. Several of the Trump projects in India “are being built through companies with family ties to India’s most important political party,” reported the Times. In the Philippines, Trump’s partner in a $150 million tower in Manila was named a special envoy to the United States in October by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, whose war on drugs has involved the summary execution of thousands of suspected drug users and sellers.

Michael H. Fuchs, who until recently helped to oversee American relations with the Philippines as deputy assistant secretary of state, explained to the Times that “the biggest gray area may not be a President Trump himself advocating for favors for the Trump Organization. It’s the diplomats and career officers who will feel the need to perhaps not do things that will harm the Trump Organization’s interests. It is seriously disturbing.”

Ethics experts have raised concerns about the potential for these global deals to complicate international diplomacy and whether Trump will weigh his political actions against their impact on his business allies. Another concern is that foreign officials might take actions to benefit Trump’s local business in order to curry favor with the White House.

“America has been treated to reports of multi-billion-dollar projects across the planet, to photos of Mr. Trump glad-handing businessmen and to images of exotic, Trump-branded buildings standing like monuments to the decay of American ethics,” noted the Economist in November.

Despite his global financial entanglements, as Trump and his inner circle have repeatedly emphasized, the conflict of interest laws that restrain other federal employees don’t apply to the president. “As you know, I have a no-conflict situation because I’m president, which is—I didn’t know about that until about three months ago, but it’s a nice thing to have,” Trump said at his January 11 press conference. Days after his inauguration, a group of ethics lawyers filed a lawsuit against Trump claiming that his holdings violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from taking payments from foreign governments. Trump also hasn’t released his taxes or a list of his lenders, obscuring a complete picture of his potential global conflicts.

Though Trump announced at his January 11 press conference that he would not pursue additional foreign deals while in office and that he would move his assets into a trust controlled by his children, income from the Panama project will continue to roll in.

And that makes for a potential ethical conflict for the president. As the Wall Street Journal noted recently, “if the U.S. were to get into a dispute with [Panama] during the Trump administration, it might appear that his desire to maintain this revenue stream might influence his decision making.”

International extradition requests involve both executive and judicial processes, as the State Department receives the initial request from the foreign government in question and decides if it should be passed on to the Justice Department. If it is, and an ensuing court process finds the subject of the request to be extraditable, the case goes back to the Secretary of State, who is vested with the final decision-making power over whether to authorize the extradition. As explained in a recent article in Law360 co-authored by former Justice and State Department lawyers, “the Secretary of State has ultimate discretion to determine whether the subject should be released or surrendered. In making this decision, the Secretary may take into account ‘any humanitarian or other considerations for or against surrender,’ as well as ‘written materials submitted by the fugitive, his or her counsel, or other interested parties.’”

While the Secretary of State and the executive branch are unlikely to get involved in requests to extradite the average alleged criminal, an extradition request for a former head of state will inevitably become tangled with international politics and diplomatic concerns. “It would have to get red-flagged,” says John Parry, a professor of law at Lewis & Clark Law School who has worked on extradition cases. The United States generally tries to handle the average extradition request from close allies reasonably expeditiously through the judicial system, but for “the ones that have a diplomatic or political or foreign relations angle” like a former head of state like Martinelli, Parry explains, “the political people are going to want to be involved in some way, they just are.”

If the subject of such a high-profile extradition request were a friend or associate of the president, Parry says you’d expect the president to recuse himself from the decision-making process, even instructing their Attorney General and Secretary of State not to discuss the request with him. “If the president were to get directly involved or if the president’s close advisors on behalf of the president got directly involved with the extradition, sure that would raise a conflict of interest question, I think it definitely would,” says Parry.

The Trump administration hasn’t commented on the extradition request or whether the president has been in contact with Martinelli since his election, despite repeated requests from Fast Company. Shortly after his election victory, Trump had a phone call with current Panamanian president Juan Carlos Varela, who was Martinelli’s vice-president during his 2009-2014 term, with whom he reportedly discussed regional security, commerce, and the fight against organized crime and drug trafficking. It is unclear whether they also discussed the extradition request, and Panamanian officials declined to tell Fast Company if the two leaders discussed the fate of Martinelli. When asked about the current status of the request, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would only say that the process is in American hands. President Varela’s office did not respond to requests for comment. The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t comment on extradition requests as a matter of policy. (On February 19, Trump called Varela for another conversation about shared security concerns, and invited him to visit Washington in the months ahead.)

Despite all of his troubles in Panama, Martinelli seems confident that he remains in Trump’s good graces. The day after Trump’s victory, Martinelli tweeted his congratulations on the “triumph,” adding “God bless America.” And days before Trump’s inauguration, Martinelli tweeted an image of what he described as an “invitation” to the official Trump-Pence Inaugural Ball. (A few minutes later, after Twitter users in Panama took notice, he deleted the tweet and didn’t mention the inauguration again until the day of the ceremony, when he tweeted about what a beautiful city Washington was and how many people were in town for the event, posting similar sentiments on Facebook.) It’s not clear if Martinelli actually attended the inauguration or the inaugural ball and his spokesman declined to tell Fast Company whether the former president has been in touch with Trump or his staff since the U.S. election.

“We’ll do anything to support Trump in their mission.”

Soon after Martinelli took office in 2009, Trump became one of his biggest fans. Though there were already news reports detailing the Panamanian president’s “lack of commitment to ‘rule of law,’” per diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, Trump anointed the Latin American leader a “great president” in 2011 and cheered the businessman-turned-politician’s corporate style. “Frankly, we need some of that in the United States,” he told the Christian Science Monitor in Panama City after inaugurating the Ocean Club. He lionized Martinelli as a “businessman with heart,” whose leadership in Panama showed Trump “that’s why the United States is doing so poorly, because it’s not being run properly, it’s not being run as a businessman would,” he told the Monitor.

That summer, Trump’s opening of the mixed hotel and condo development on Panama City’s waterfront to which he’d licensed his name and that his management company would run marked a new frontier in his ambitions. With his name recognition exploding due to his successful TV show, The Apprentice, and dogged by a mixed record at home with some high-profile U.S. projects ending up in foreclosure or unfinished, Trump’s decision to license his name overseas was a smart move. In Martinelli’s remarks at the Ocean Club’s opening event, he lavished praise on Trump, thanking him for “allowing this wonderful building to have his name,” toured the hotel with him, told Trump that “everything you touch turns to gold,” and invited him to go sport fishing.

Eric Trump told the crowd at another opening event in July 2011 that “first it takes an unbelievable government and you just heard it—‘We’ll do anything to support Trump in their mission.’ It’s not often that you hear governments say that and it’s such a relief to come into a country that’s so pro-development.”

It was the Trump Organization’s first international real estate deal, “the one by which the rest will be benchmarked,” as Eric put it. Ivanka explained in an earlier interview with the Monitor in February 2011 that “this building is a very important bridge for us as we begin to expand internationally, not just through South America, but the world.”

Мы, как всегда, с Ваней скромно в центре событий

Trump posing with Ocean Club staffers and associates during the development’s opening ceremony in Panama City on July 6, 2011.

Despite initial fears that Trump’s inflammatory campaign rhetoric might hurt his brand, by the time he was elected president buyers were eagerly snapping up Ocean Club units in a rush—the last of the developer-controlled condos were sold at the end of 2016. The project’s developer Newland International Properties had noted under “Risk Factors” in an October 2015 debt offering document that Trump’s campaign “may negatively impact potential buyers’ perceptions of Trump Ocean Club.” But the concerns turned out to be unfounded, as “demand spiked in the weeks following Mr. Trump’s election, with buyers betting that the Trump brand will surge in value,” noted the managing director of Punta Pacifica Realty, a local sales and management company that handled many of the final deals and tracked Ocean Club sales data. In a recent press release titled “New Interest for Trump Project in Panama City,” he wrote that “since the election, PPR has seen the trend continue, with inquiries high as potential buyers investigate the impact of the Trump Effect on the building’s values.”

When The Trumps First Met Martinelli

The Trump family first met Martinelli back in 2006, when Ocean Club developer Roger Khafif invited him to an early meeting with Ivanka, Eric, Donald Jr., and a handful of local government representatives including the mayor of Panama City. “I was friends with Ricardo from way before he became president,” Khafif says, adding that he’s “known him for the last 20 years or so.” “Panama is a small country, everybody knows everybody,” Khafif says, describing that early 2006 meeting with Martinelli as more of a social networking event. Martinelli was then a prominent businessman who owned one of the biggest and most visible companies in Panama, the supermarket chain Super 99, and was also the leader of the pro-business Cambio Democrático party.

Donald Trump speaks with Panama’s President Ricardo Martinelli during the inauguration ceremony of the Trump Ocean Club in Panama City on July 6, 2011.[Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images]

Khafif says that he had previously sold Martinelli an apartment at a smaller resort project that he’d worked on in the past, but wasn’t aware of any stake that Martinelli may have acquired in the Ocean Club.

Still, in the small world that is Panama, Martinelli’s interest in the hotel was not just personal. He was a director of Global Bank, one of the largest banks in the country, whose subsidiary Global Financial Funds became the co-trustee for the project a couple of years after the complex opened in 2011. Global Financial Funds replaced the previous co-trustee, HSBC’s Panama unit, in 2013, the same year that HSBC sold its Panamanian assets to a Colombian bank. Khafif says that Global Bank was “a bank we used to work with” before signing them on in 2013, and insisted that Martinelli “had nothing to do with” the bank’s role as co-trustee of the Ocean Club.

As co-trustee, Global Financial Funds gained a view into the project’s books and buyers, and was “supposed to make sure money was spent the right way,” as Khafif puts it. Global Financial Funds was responsible for receiving funds coming in from rentals and sales accounts and for transferring it to a disbursement account, after having reserved or paid Trump’s commission for the licensing of his name. As co-trustee, Global Financial Funds was also given custody of certain collateral related to the Ocean Club, such as the original stock certificates.

Global Bank, where Martinelli’s son Ricardo (Rica) also became a director and his wife has been listed as an alternate director, was recently singled out by the Times as being “one of three Panamanian banks whose outlook was recently revised by S & P Global to negative from stable, reflecting ‘shortfalls in regulation, supervision, governance, and transparency in the Panamanian financial system.’”

Global Bank declined to tell Fast Company if Martinelli still serves on the bank’s board or in any other capacity. There is still a Ricardo Martinelli listed on the board of Global Bank subsidiary Global Valores, which offers investment products and services, on the company’s website. (A few hours after Fast Company reached out to Global Bank and the former president’s son Rica, the bank’s webpage listing this Martinelli on the board began redirecting to another part of the company’s website.)

Corruption, Bullying, And Blackmail

The Trumps’ admiration of Martinelli appeared to be unaffected by the cascade of international news about his increasingly authoritarian and vindictive behavior, blown open by WikiLeaks’ 2010 release of U.S. diplomatic cables, in the year before the family publicly heaped praise on him. Mainstream news outlets like the Times covered these revelations published by WikiLeaks—one of Trump’s favorite sources during the U.S. election—about Martinelli in great detail starting in late 2010. According to the cables, Martinelli ruled by “bullying and blackmail,” and had threatened to stop cooperating with the United States unless American officials helped him with a wiretapping program. The cables documented U.S. Embassy officials in Panama sounding red alarms over Martinelli beginning as early as the second week of his 2009-2014 administration. That’s when, as McClatchy noted, the U.S. Ambassador to Panama presciently warned that he was “almost certain to spell trouble for Panama’s democratic institutions.”

Panama’s anti-corruption czar Angélica Maytín Justiniani said that the amount lost to corruption in Martinelli’s administration is “possibly in the billions of dollars,” and that “it’s obvious that a lot of the money is outside Panama,” McClatchy reported in 2015. She added that “we’re learning of midlevel [former] officials who have assets of $25 million and 10 properties. We never saw anything like this, even under the military dictatorship.” A Panamanian law professor and human rights activist concurred in an interview with NPR that Martinelli “did more harm to the country than even the dictatorships of the last century,” as “even the militaries, they were not able to develop the degrees and the practice of corruption like Martinelli did.”

Trump’s previous statements implying that overseas corruption was just another cost of doing business suggest that the allegations wouldn’t have raised many red flags anyway. When Walmart’s massive Mexican bribery scandal broke in 2012, Donald Trump said that the U.S. anti-bribery law that applies internationally, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, is a “horrible law and it should be changed.” “Every other country in the world is doing it and we’re not allowed to. It puts us at a huge disadvantage…the world is laughing at us,” he said.

A glimpse into the magnitude of that alleged corruption was revealed in federal court in Brooklyn in December, where Latin America’s largest construction company, Odebrecht, pleaded guilty in a case brought by officials in the United States, Brazil, and Switzerland involving a global bribery scheme spanning a dozen countries. Panama’s current government says that the Martinelli administration was the recipient of Panama’s share of these bribes (Martinelli’s sons have denied any involvement to the local press). On January 12, Panama’s attorney general said that Odebrecht had agreed to pay the Panamanian government more than $59 million in reparations for the bribes it allegedly paid to secure contracts between 2010 and 2014, while Martinelli was president. “The sum is the amount in bribes Odebrecht admitted paying to officials and intermediaries there in a plea agreement disclosed in December in a U.S. court,” Reuters reported. Odebrecht, along with its affiliated petrochemical firm, would pay at least $3.5 billion in penalties in the global case, the biggest penalty ever for a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, reports the Times.

At the end of January, Panama charged and ordered the investigation of 17 people in the Odebrecht bribery case, reportedly including Martinelli’s sons Rica and Luis Enrique. And on February 14 their government said thatInterpol had issued international “red notices” for Martinelli’s sons Ricardo (Rica) and Luis Enrique in the Odebrecht case, at the request of Panama’s anti-corruption prosecutor. Some of the money was allegedly laundered through Swiss bank accounts, and such Martinelli-controlled accounts containing $22 million were reportedly frozen in the process, according to Univision.

Since fleeing Panama, Martinelli has blamed his troubles on “rigged” circumstances engineered by political enemies who are a threat to his life. In response to the Panamanian Supreme Court’s ruling demanding his detention to face the charges against him, Martinelli wrote in a letter in late 2015 that “like those now detained illegally, I’m a victim of rigged proceedings, of coerced or manufactured witnesses and it is ever more evident the violations to the presumption of innocence and due process.”

Martinelli is just one of several foreign leaders suspected of corruption abroad who have found refuge in the United States. There are explicit government policies “designed to keep the United States from becoming a haven for corrupt officials,” but a number of such officials fleeing their legal systems back home “have slipped through the cracks,” reported ProPublica in a recent article co-published with the Miami Herald, calling Martinelli “one of the most prominent cases.” Proclamation 7750, issued by George W. Bush in 2004, has the force of law and instructs the State Department “to ban officials who have accepted bribes or misappropriated public funds when their actions have ‘serious adverse effects on the national interests of the United States.’” Under these rules, U.S. officials “do not need a conviction or even formal charges to justify denying a visa,” and can do so “based on information from unofficial, or informal sources, including newspaper articles,” noted ProPublica.

In response to the article, Martinelli’s spokesman released a letter declaring that “it is wrong to say that former President Martinelli is in the United States to avoid facing these political processes. Actually having no accused status and haven’t not being [sic] formally charged, he has faced each of this [sic] processes through his attorneys as granted by our laws and constitution.” Martinelli’s letter claimed that “in Panama his life is threatened by the political persecution of President Juan Carlos Varela,” and even accused the current administration of using “torture” to extract false accusations against him. Martinelli’s team added that “there is no documentary evidence or material that links former President Ricardo Martinelli in the alleged facts.”

Despite several requests for comment, Martinelli declined to be interviewed for this story.

The American Martinelli

Trump and Martinelli’s mutual affection seems to be partly based on their status as wealthy men with political ambitions who appear to be unmoved by concerns over conflicts of interest. By 2015, Martinelli’s net worth had risen to $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Aside from Super 99, he has other large holdings in media, real estate, banking, energy, and sugar, and owns a plane, two helicopters, and a yacht, according to Bloomberg. Martinelli was elected on the promise that he would run Panama as he ran his businesses. With his election in 2009, he had perfected the style of right-wing populism that Trump is selling to Americans today. Martinelli’s massive personal wealth, the campaign sales pitch went, made him the only outsider immune to influence and able to dismantle an entrenched and corrupt political establishment.

Trump’s campaign was so resonant with Martinelli’s that many Panamanians today refer to Trump as the “American Martinelli.” They even shared the same political operative, Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, who worked on Martinelli’s campaign in 2009 and guided a pro-Trump super PAC in 2016. Castellanos, a high-profile political and corporate consultant, appeared regularly on Meet the Press and CNN during the campaign as a Trump supporter (though he was a Trump critic before the nomination).

Castellanos has said that the now-fugitive leader, whom he referred to as “Panama’s version of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi,” “was politically incorrect on the good days, ragingly out of control on others.” As with Trump, “we couldn’t hide his affluence so we celebrated it,” Castellanos explained, adding that “we used his wealth without apology, as inspiration for every Panamanian’s success.”

“One Of the Most Beautiful Buildings In The World”

The Trump Ocean Club tower that Martinelli helped to inaugurate in 2011 was heralded as the icon of Panama City’s rapidly expanding skyline–50 skyscrapers have been built around the crowded shoreline since 2007. (There is also one of Martinelli’s Super 99 supermarkets just a few blocks from the Ocean Club, to which the complex offers free shuttle service.)

[Photo: via Trump Hotels]

The Ocean Club’s official website explains that the goal was to build “the most spectacular development in Panama’s history,” and Trump called it “one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.” Trump tweeted that the building had become “Central America’s architectural icon,” announcing that “excellence has arrived to So. America.” The Ocean Club was supposed to be a kind of Elysium on the isthmus for rich expats drawn to Panama for its relaxed tax and immigration laws, and one of “the best retirement programs in the world,” according to its promotional material. Ivanka Trump explained to the Latin Business Chronicle that Panama’s incentives were “incredibly luring to international [investors], especially as we in America are being taxed to the hilt.” Ocean Club condo units are exempt from property taxes through 2031.

***

Panama’s long-term global strategic importance, due to the Panama Canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, has also helped reassure Ocean Club buyers that the region has some degree of economic stability. Today, a third of trade coming from Asia to America passes through the canal. The country has been the key passageway for interoceanic trade going back hundreds of years to the days of the Spanish Empire, when South America’s resources like the gold and silver of the Inca empire were shipped to Spain via Panama. Martinelli had also served as chairman of the board of directors of the Panama Canal Authority and as minister of Canal Affairs from 1999 to 2003.

Trump famously outraged many Panamanians in the year before the Ocean Club opening, when he lamented that the canal had just been given back to the Panamanian people. “We gave it to Panama. We didn’t say, here, take us, pay us $100 billion over a 10-year period or 50-year period. Who are these people that are making these decisions? So, we have very bad decision-makers in this country. And this country didn’t get great by having decisions like that made,” Trump told Wolf Blitzer in 2010. In response, Panama City councillors voted unanimously to declare Donald Trump “persona non grata” in March 2011, just months before his project’s grand opening there. Panama’s Commerce and Industry Minister Roberto Henriquez said that “somebody who has 400 million dollars invested in Panama should not speak this way,” and that “I think it was a political stupidity on the part of Donald Trump,” AFP reported. After the backlash, Trump issued a rare conciliatory statement and spoke to Panamanian press, insisting that he was simply criticizing the negotiating abilities of American politicians and that “if I were from Panama, I’d try and make the same kind of a deal, I respect that.” “I paid Panama a great compliment,” he explained.

To reduce the bottleneck effect at its gates as shipping traffic and the size of container ships increased over the years, Panama announced plans for a $5.2 billion expansion of the canal in 2006—on the same day that the Trump Ocean Club was launched in New York City. The canal expansion was another important marketing tool for the development, signaling Panama’s continued economic desirability. “Panama is amazing. It’s thriving. You know why? The canal is doing so well, and they’re now expanding the Panama Canal,” Trump told CNN. “Home to the number one shipping and trade canal in the world,” Ocean Club promotional material explained.

Panama’s location connecting South and Central America—and the vast, swampy and notoriously lawless Darién Gap border region with Colombia—has also raised persistent security concerns since it has served as a key conduit for smuggling for decades. Former U.S. Ambassador Barbara Stephenson noted the arrest of Martinelli’s second cousin Ramon Martinelli in Mexico for his role in a drug smuggling ring that was transporting up to $30 million a month through Panama’s Tocumen International Airport, McClatchy noted. President Martinelli later told Stephenson, according to the cable, that Ramon was the “black sheep” of the family and that his government would have arrested him if Mexico didn’t.

Panama’s status as a nexus of drug smuggling, money laundering, and strategic importance were notoriously embodied in former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, a paid CIA asset whose nefarious activities prompted President George H. W. Bush to launch Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama in late 1989 that involved tens of thousands of U.S. troops. Noriega was under indictment in Florida on drug trafficking charges before the invasion, and after his capture and arrest in Panama, he was taken back to the United States and sentenced to 40 years in prison (later reduced to 30) on drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering charges. He was the first foreign head of state to be convicted on criminal charges in a U.S. court. (In 2010, Noriega was extradited to France on further money laundering charges, where he received a seven-year sentence, but in 2011 was extradited back to Panama to serve a sentence there for the murder of opponents during his rule.)

While Trump constantly raged against “globalists” during his presidential campaign, the Ocean Club was meant to be a magnet for precisely the kind of borderless flow of money that he now loves to criticize. (Panama also has the second-largest free-trade zone on Earth, after Hong Kong, a fact highlighted in the Ocean Club’s sales pitch.) Panama has been a pillar of globalization for hundreds of years, in recent decades known as one of the world’s premier “money laundries” for its facilitation of opaque international financial transactions and corporate confidentiality laws. (The new government of Panama says that it is implementing greater transparency laws, though as President Varela admitted to the Times last year, “under previous governments, Panama was no doubt a target of money launderers.”)

Real estate in Panama City was booming in part because of all the dirty money flowing in from around the world. As a U.S. Embassy cable from 2007 released by WikiLeaks noted, “ultimately, real estate projects financed by the proceeds of criminal activity distort the market for legitimate developers and create excess supply, which may be why 20,000 luxury apartments are projected to be available in Panama City between now and 2010.” Pointing out the city’s noticeably dark skyline, photographer Paolo Woods told the Times in 2015: “What’s amazing is most of the skyscrapers are dark,” adding that “they’re just there to launder money.”

As the BBC put it in 2014, “the Russian mafia is believed to control some prime real estate in Panama City while the Sinaloa Cartel— perhaps the most powerful drug-trafficking organization in the world—brings its cocaine from Colombia via Panama on its route north.”

Some international buyers of Trump Ocean Club units were assisted by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca with the creation of accompanying offshore shell companies set up to facilitate those purchases, according to emails released in last year’s infamous Panama Papers leak. One of the firm’s principals, Ramon Fonseca, also served as an advisor to then-President Martinelli. On February 9, Fonseca and the co-head of the firm, Jürgen Mossack, were taken into custody and denied bail by Panamanian authorities as part of the government’s investigation into the Odebrecht bribery scandal. The firm is just one of many other law firms and lawyers who assisted buyers of Trump Ocean Club units with creating such offshore entities, according to Panamanian corporate records. The leaked emails show the Ocean Club development company’s COO initiating contact with and offering to cover travel expenses for Mossack Fonseca lawyers, McClatchy reported.

(Panamanian shell companies have also been a popular vehicle for buyers of luxury Trump properties back home. As Forbes reported in a story about money laundering in 1986, “once the money enters the banking stream through shady banks, it is indistinguishable from other money. For example, fully one-third the apartments in Manhattan’s super-expensive condominium Trump Tower are owned by foreign corporations, mostly from Panama and the Netherlands Antilles.” Among these Panama-routed early Trump funds were those of Haitian dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who famously acquired a foothold in Trump Tower in 1983, the year it opened, when his very close friend and family decorator purchased a unit. The condo, then worth $1.65 million, was paid for under cover of a Panamanian shell company, according to a 1986 lawsuit filed in the U.S. by the Haitian government.)

While marketing the Ocean Club to the global jet set crowd, the building’s sales team put extra emphasis on Russian investors looking to park cash overseas, and held Russian marketing events around the world from Moscow to Mar-a-Lago. As the Times put it in an examination of Trump’s Russian forays on January 16, “he discovered that his name was especially attractive in developing countries where the rising rich aspired to the type of ritzy glamour he personified.” Panama City became one of the preferred Trump projects for Russian investors looking to move their money offshore, offering a more affordable South Florida-type lifestyle with relaxed tax and immigration laws, and stable property rights. (The Trump brand also became popular in places like “Little Moscow” in South Florida, where as the Post reported in November, “Russians helped Donald Trump’s brand survive the recession.”) As the Trump Organization’s chief counsel told the Post, “there’s newfound wealth in Russia,” and “any developer is going to where you have a chance of selling your product.”

The “newfound wealth” that he was referring to included the vast amounts of cash that had long been pouring out of Russia’s chaotic post-Soviet economy, capital flight that is today estimated to have exceeded $1 trillion. This newfound Russian wealth became a valued part of the Trump Organization’s sales of condos, with Donald Trump Jr. noting in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Aside from global players, the Trump Ocean Club also became a favorite of Panama’s domestic elite, and hosted a number of high-profile Martinelli-attended events. Wharton’s Global Forum Panama featured a one-on-one discussion with Martinelli, and he attended Forbes magazine’s launch party for its Central American edition as a VIP guest. “Panamanians still talk about the lavish wedding of Martinelli’s private secretary, Adolfo ‘Chichi’ de Obarrio a year later [in 2013] at the luxury Trump Ocean Club,” attended by Martinelli and members of the ruling party, reported McClatchy in early 2015. The reporter noted that “de Obarrio, who hadn’t yet turned 30, was gatekeeper for nearly all government purchases and a friend of Martinelli’s son,” and that his wedding at Trump’s Ocean Club featured a “massive fireworks display.”

As the criminal investigations around his inner circle started to close in in early 2015, Martinelli fled Panama for his waterfront luxury condo in Miami, in a 20-story building made famous for its appearances in Scarface and on Miami Vice. Later that year, he set up a Florida company called White Shark Developments LLC. A few days after its incorporation, he tweeted that a visa was required to stay in the United States for up to 180 days, unless you invest at least $500,000 to get an investor visa.

Martinelli has remained an active presence on Twitter from his American sanctuary, where he has denied all wrongdoing. In an interview with Bloomberg reporters at a Miami cafe in 2015, he said that his political opponents “are so afraid of my tweets,” warning, “look what happened in the Arab Spring.” Martinelli was stripped of his immunity to criminal prosecution in 2015, and at the end of September the government of Panama asked the United States to extradite him to face the corruption and illegal spying charges.

Ocean Club Condo Owners To Trump’s Team: You’re Fired

Back in Panama, the Trump Ocean Club had its own legal meltdown. In 2010, Trump said that the units were “selling like hotcakes.” But just a few months after the tower’s 2011 inauguration, the project’s developer defaulted on the debt and later declared bankruptcy. By 2015, the condo owners voted to fire the Trump management team, citing “more than $2 million in unauthorized debts, paying its executives undisclosed bonuses, and withholding basic financial information from owners,” reported the Associated Press.

The condo owners’ board said that the Trump team had pulled all of this off by what the AP described as “fine print chicanery.” Trump’s management company refused to accept being fired, then announced that it was quitting and demanded a $5 million termination fee. The AP then broke the news a month later that Trump had filed a confidential claim with the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce arbitration court demanding up to $75 million, asserting that his management team had been wrongfully fired. (The Washington Post reported in January that the dispute had ended in a confidential settlement.) Trump’s team is still managing the hotel portion of the Ocean Club, for which it has a 40-year contract.

As the AP put it, “the Trump Organization’s adventures in Panama provide a window into how these traits have filtered into his business empire—and the style of management that could be expected in a Trump White House. Transparency and close attention to expenses are not strengths. Squeezing the most from contractual language is.” One retired American doctor who had purchased a unit told the AP that “I thought it was pretty safe, because we had Trump involved,” but that he’d since realized that “he’s a predatory businessman.”

The last time a member of the Trump family appears to have visited Panama City was in December 2015, when Eric Trump travelled there to attend the Ocean Club’s fourth anniversary party and “to strengthen and support the plans to improve the property in the near future,” according to a press release. In an interview with the AP that fall, the president’s son dismissed the troubles inside the building as a sideshow to what the Ocean Club was really about–“an amazing icon and, frankly, a great testament to America.”

Meanwhile, Martinelli spends his time in Miami meeting friends, posting photos of himself working out at the gym, mocking current Panamanian president Varela, sharing his favorite songs like the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love” on Facebook, and fulminating on social media about his political enemies. But he hasn’t mentioned Trump on Facebook or Twitter since the inauguration.

Ding: After 2 Years, Tea Party Targeting 6,924 Documents Found

Posted on by

Republicans want to know why Trump hasn’t fired the IRS head

*** and so do I…

FNC: Nearly two months into the Trump administration, the IRS commissioner House Republicans once threatened with impeachment remains on the job.

John Koskinen’s continued tenure may be surprising, considering how aggressively Republicans went after him under the Obama administration. But despite a sustained push by congressional Republicans to oust the IRS chief before his five-year term expires this November, President Trump so far has made no move to do so.

Just last week, Koskinen was seen in the Capitol and told Fox News he was there to meet with “old friends.” Asked if he intended to stay on as commissioner during the Trump administration, Koskinen simply said, “They haven’t talked to me.”

A White House official, asked about the commissioner’s future, also told Fox News on Wednesday they had no personnel announcements “at this time.”

House Republicans aren’t giving up their quest to show Koskinen the door.

“President Trump should fire Commissioner Koskinen and replace him with someone that will bring integrity and competence to the IRS,” House Judiciary Committee Chariman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told Fox News on Tuesday.

Just days after Trump took office, Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker, R- N.C., along with 53 other House Republicans, also wrote a letter asking the new president to remove Koskinen.

“The consideration of the impeachment of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in the House in late 2016 was a clear indication that Congress and the American people have no confidence in Commissioner Koskinen or his ability to discharge his duties,” Walker wrote, nudging the president by citing statutory language giving him authority to strip Koskinen of his title. Doing so, he claimed, would “restore the credibility” of the federal tax authority.

“We have not received a response to our letter,” an aide at the Republican Study Committee told Fox News. “We understand, however, the administration remains busy putting its team in place, and we look forward to its response.”

A White House spokesperson told Fox News they received the January letter and “are currently reviewing it.”

Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., reportedly also asked Vice President Mike Pence at the GOP retreat in Philadelphia if he would seek Koskinen’s resignation. According to the report, the vice president told the congressman he would look into the matter and follow up with him the next week.

SEKULOW: KOSKINEN SHOULD RESIGN

Neither DeSantis’ nor the VP’s office responded to Fox News’ request for comment on whether there was any follow-up.

But DeSantis issued a statement to Fox News saying: “The IRS will not be reformed under Koskinen’s leadership and I urge [Treasury] Secretary Mnuchin and President Trump to take action to replace Koskinen with someone willing to reform this troubled agency.”

An IRS spokesperson told Fox News, “The Commissioner remains focused on the important tax administration work being done at the IRS, including a successful start to the nation’s tax season.”

GOP angst toward Koskinen stems from claims he obstructed their investigation of the targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups before he was commissioner. The matter culminated at the end of 2016, when the full House turned back an attempt to impeach him.

The controversy itself hasn’t died off. Judicial Watch said Wednesday that the IRS reported to a U.S. District Court that it located an “additional 6,924 documents of potentially responsive records” relating to the FOIA lawsuit on the targeting scandal.

Goodlatte said it’s “outrageous” that “years have gone by” and no one at the IRS has been held accountable for the targeting.

At the IRS, the commissioner serves a five-year term—this, after a statute was added in 1998 in a bid to maintain continuity for the American people throughout the tax season in the first year of a new presidency.

Koskinen’s term is set to end Nov. 13, unless the president were to remove him.

Charles Rossotti, an IRS commissioner under then-President Bill Clinton and the first to serve the five-year term, defended the importance of the statute — telling Fox News while the head of the IRS is a political appointee, he or she is only in charge of administering the tax code.

“If you’re going to run an agency as huge as the IRS, you need time and continuity to make improvements, so the distinction was made as an administrative leadership management position as opposed to a policy position,” Rossotti said, citing the “demanding” situation that surrounds the April tax deadline. “You really wouldn’t want to have no commissioner when the administration changes just two months before Americans file their returns.”

While Koskinen is a favorite target of congressional Republicans, he and Trump do have a history.

In 1975, when the future president reached an agreement to purchase New York’s Commodore Hotel from the bankrupt Penn Central Transportation Company, Koskinen handled the sale of the properties in his capacity as vice president of consulting firm the Palmieri Company, according to a New York Times article.

The purchase was one of Trump’s first major real estate deals.

Fox News asked the White House for comment on the president’s relationship with Koskinen. “We don’t comment on the President’s personal relationships,” a White House spokesperson responded in an email.

Republicans and conservative groups alike say it would be “frustrating” to keep Koskinen through the end of his term.

But Rossotti defended both Trump and Koskinen.

“When I did the transition to Bush, if someone had come to me and said, ‘look, we don’t want you here,’ I wouldn’t have stayed,” Rossotti said. “But anybody sensible would look at this situation and decide there are a lot of people who need to file their tax returns next month.”

*** Meanwhile..

Two Years Later, IRS Locates 6,924 Documents Related to Tea Party Targeting

Agency will not commit to a timeframe to make the documents public

FreeBeacon: The Internal Revenue Service has located 6,924 documents potentially related to the targeting of Tea Party conservatives, two years after the group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for them.

The watchdog group intended to find records regarding how the IRS selected individuals and organizations for audits that were requesting nonprofit tax status.

The agency will not say when it will make the documents available to the public.

“At this time, the Service is unable to provide an estimate regarding when it will complete its review of the potentially responsive documents,” the agency said. “The Service will begin producing any non-exempt, responsive documents by March 10, 2017, and, if necessary, continue to produce non-responsive records on a bi-weekly basis.”

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, is calling on President Trump to clean house at the agency.

“The corruption at the IRS is astounding,” Fitton said in a statement. “Our attorneys knew that there were more records to be searched but the Obama IRS ignored this issue for years. President Trump needs to clean house at the IRS as quickly as possible.”