Letters to Bette: Debunking Trump's "Debanking" Accusations?
Retired IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil offers "some Bank One AML (alleged money laundering) concept points" after we learned last week that hundreds of Trump Org bank accounts were shuttered
***Please take out a membership to support the light of truth.***
Author’s note: A quick note to thank the Bette community for showing up for our first Crossroads event with Irish artist Damian Manning. I was so proud that so many of you attended. Thank you!
So I just had a quick chat with retired IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil, who is a frequent contributor to Bette Dangerous. He says what is moving the needle for Americans in this moment is they are uniting against the vast capital ‘C’ Corruption of Trump and his loyalists. And on that note, you can rely on these pages to continue spotlighting the reality of their grift and graft. If you are new here, start with my recent American Overthrow reporting. Trump and his loyalists thought they could normalize their Corruption, but as it turns out, the staggering enormity and openness of their criminality is causing massive repulsion. In this Letter to Bette, Marty offers some further thoughts and questions about last week’s breaker on the closures of hundreds of Trump Org bank accounts due to anti-laundering investigations. Enjoy this trip to South Florida, aka the Russian Riviera.—hsc
Photo courtesy: Heidi Siegmund Cuda for Bette Dangerous
“Money laundering is defined as engaging in financial transactions with proceeds derived from specified unlawful activity — known as an SUA — with the intent to either promote the SUA or conceal the SUA.”—Martin Sheil for Bette Dangerous
Letters to Bette: Debunking Trump’s “Debanking” Accusations?
‘Bank One AML (alleged money laundering) concept points’
by Martin Sheil
Hello Heidi,
Some concept points regarding Bank One’s alleged money laundering relative to the Trump Organization:
I wish to focus on some potential specified unlawful activities — SUAs — that have been in the news. Before doing that, let’s reiterate that Bank One has been taken over by JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO is Jamie Dimon. Both Chase and Dimon have been sued by Trump for “debanking” the Trump Organization bank accounts in violation of Trump’s executive order 14331 guaranteeing fair banking for all.
So Todd Blanche, who used to be Trump’s personal attorney, is now the 88th U.S. Attorney General, and in the paradoxical position of enforcing Trump’s executive orders, which may be in opposition to Trump’s personal lawsuits.
Should Blanche or any of his DOJ minions discover evidence of any specified unlawful activity on the part of Trump’s main business - Trump Organization or any of its executive management or Trustees, including Eric Trump, Don Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump or her husband Jared Kushner, what’s an AG to do?
If Bank One’s internal AML unit identified enough evidence of potential money laundering via suspicious financial transactions by the Trump Organization in South Florida to close Trump Organization bank accounts, what SUA activities did they associate with the suspicious financial transactions?
Given the lack of detail currently available, we can only speculate so let’s throw out a few speculative SUAs:
It is known that the Trump Organization sold multiple ghost condos to wealthy Russians over the past decade or two both in Trump Tower NY and Trump Tower Sunny Isles in what is now known as Moscow South. Selling multimillion dollar condos for cash (with vague sources such as Russian-sanctioned flight capital, Russian organized crime etc.) to shell companies with anonymous beneficial owners bears the earmarks of money laundering that should alert any well-trained AML investigators.
Trump Tower Tbilisi - recently the Trump Organization boasted about concluding an agreement to build Trump Tower Tbilisi in the ex-Soviet Republic of Georgia. Details of the financing of the construction of this Tower and partners to the Trump Organization are nebulous, but a main partner is known to be a native Georgian businessman and former Prime Minister by the name of Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is known to be close to the Russian PM Vladimir Putin and also known to control offshore shell companies and Swiss Bank accounts. The prospective SUA specter of bribery, emoluments, and/or Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations loom here and financial transactions between Georgian businessmen (oligarchs) and the Trump Organization and Bank One accounts located in Moscow South might be normalized until further consideration of the presence of offshore shell companies and banks raise some level of AML suspicion. (Author’s note: more on Trump Tower Tbilisi here.)
Trump Organization and the Kazakhstan Tungsten deal. So, you just know The Donald is known to be obsessed with rare earth minerals after Musk talked his ear off warning about Chinese domination, the tech industry’s coming need for them, and the Trumpster’s obsession with Greenland and their possession of large amounts of rare earths. So Eric Trump likely heard all about them from his daddy and quickly found out that Kazakhstan is known to possess large amounts of rare earths, including tungsten. So Eric swung a deal with businessmen in Kazakhstan - a country on the other side of the world squeezed between China and Russia. So, just how did that deal go over with the last standing member of the infamous Kazak trio - Alexander Mashkevich, who has long associated with Russian organized crime as well as the FSB? Mashkevich was an owner of the Troika Dialog, a Russian bank headquartered in Moscow, and before that was prosecuted for money laundering in Belgium when he headed up a branch of Seabeco - a business founded by ROC leader and double agent for the FSB and Mossad, Boris Birshtein. The Kazak trio and Mashkevich have a long-documented history of exploiting mineral resources located in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Africa. AML investigators for Bank One would likely want to know if Mashkevich, with his history of money laundering and offshore shell company and shaky bank dealings, had anything to do with the Tungsten deal. One thing we do know about Mashkevich is that he donated one million dollars to the first Trump inaugural fund.
FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) violations served as the SUA when Paul Manafort was successfully prosecuted for money laundering. So the question comes to mind, when Trump Organization operatives dealt with foreign leaders in negotiating recent foreign deals in foreign countries such as the Republic of Georgia, Albania and Kazakhstan, to say nothing of past or ongoing Trump Organization activities in Egypt and Abu Dhabi, were any of these operatives in violation of FARA? I am specifically referencing Trump Organization executives such as Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump.
The Princess of Darkness and the financing of Trump vanity projects: recent media reports point to Meredith O’Rourke as the Trump point person in soliciting funds from the usual Trump suspect oligarch political contributors in order to subsidize such notorious projects as the White House Ballroom, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the Sculpture Garden Ice Rink, et al. The solicited funds were allegedly directed to select PAC - aka dark money accounts. Trump supposedly huddled daily with his “princess of darkness” to monitor her progress in collecting funds. Did the Trump Organization ever step in to assist the princess in her efforts to collect funding?
Were any of the solicited funds sourced from overseas and run through Trump Organization accounts at Bank One?
Clean money transferred internationally to the U.S. can be considered money laundering if they were obtained (transferred) for the purpose of promoting an SUA such as bribery or illegal campaign funding.
So that does it for today’s concept points regarding potential future narratives relative to Bank One and the Trump Organization’s closure of bank accounts after internal AML scrutiny. Given President Trump and his family’s reported income in the billions of dollars while in office, it is likely that potential money laundering concepts referenced above are only scratching the surface.
We can conclude by observing that the progressive slogan that proved so successful in recent primaries will likely be echoed frequently in the run up to the mid-term elections in November - “Get the money out of politics and into the people’s pockets!”
Best,
Marty
Supervisory Special Agent, IRS, Criminal Investigations, retired
You can support Marty’s Substack here.
****
****
Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members.
I expose the corruption of billionaire fascists, and your paid subscriptions help support my efforts.
Thank you in advance for considering the following:
Share my reporting with allies
Buying my ebooks
A private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous/gmail. 🥹
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
🤍
Begin each day with a grateful heart.
🤍