Tale of Trump and partner in Azerbaijan real estate project
Six months before he entered the presidential race, Donald Trump announced a new real estate project in Baku, Azerbaijan. His partner was the son of a government minister suspected by U.S. diplomats of laundering money for Iran's military and described as "notoriously corrupt." Eighteen months later, and only weeks after daughter Ivanka Trump released a publicity video of the nearly finished project, references to the Baku project have disappeared from Trump's website. Trump's general counsel, Alan Garten, told The Associated Press that it was on hold for economic reasons. Trump often talks of hiring the best people and surrounding himself with people he can trust.
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.
Trump's choice of partners in Baku was Anar Mammadov, the son of the country's transportation minister. Anar Mammadov did not respond to AP's emails or messages sent to his social media accounts or messages left with his company. 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.
In addition to possible oversights related to his real estate partners' background, Trump has sometimes brought people with shaky pasts into Trump-branded business ventures. In 2006, Trump helped launch Trump Mortgage, an ill-fated attempt to sell subprime loans. Trump appeared on stage alongside E.J. Ridings, billed by Trump Mortgage as formerly "a top executive at one of Wall Street's most prestigious investment banks." Ridings' actual resume was more modest. He had been an entry-level broker at Morgan Stanley, for a total of six days, as Money Magazine first reported. Ridings resigned. He did not return a message from AP that was left on his cellphone or respond to contacts on active social media accounts.
Similar problems affected hires for Trump University, a defunct real estate investing seminar company. Though the instructors were supposedly "hand-picked" by Trump, he left the selection to others, who didn't successfully vet all of them, either. Some of the instructors had filed for bankruptcy protection. Others were unqualified. "He defrauded us, OK?" Trump said of one former instructor's declaration that he knew little about real estate. Garten said Trump's organization performed background checks on every instructor, mentor and employee it hired for Trump University, and said some instructors were affiliated with a third-party licensee. In the deposition, Trump was sanguine about his hiring process. "In every business, people slip through the cracks," he said. "No matter how well-run a business, people come in and they're not good, and you wonder, you know, how did they get there, et cetera."
Yes, sometimes you
do wonder "How did they get there?"
