President Trump and his allies have been there to draw attention to his son’s business dealings with Democratic nominee Joseph R. Biden Jr. has tried to paint China as soft.
The Senate Republican, among other things, released a report saying Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, “opens a bank account” with a Chinese businessman who said he had “numerous connections with foreign nationals and foreign governments around the world.”
But Mr. Trump’s own business history is replete with foreign financial deals, and some have included the Chinese state. He failed a decade to pursue projects in China, running an operating fee there during his first run for president and forming a partnership with a large government-controlled company.
And it turns out that China is only one of three foreign countries – the other is Britain and Ireland – where Mr. Trump maintains a bank account, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records, obtained by the New York Times. Foreign accounts are not shown on Mr. Trump’s public financial advertisements, where he must list personal assets, as they are held under a corporate name. The identities of financial institutions are not clear.
China’s account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management LLC, a tax report that states that 2013 188,561 in taxes were paid in China between 2013 and 2015 when licensing deals were launched.
Tax records do not include details of how much money can be passed from foreign accounts, although internal revenue service filers have to report part of their income from other countries. British and Irish accounts are held by companies that run Mr. Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, which regularly report millions of dollars in revenue from those countries. Trump International Hotels Management reported only a few thousand dollars from China.
In response to questions from The Times, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said the company “opened an account in a Chinese bank with office fees in the United States to pay local taxes associated with doing business.” There. He said the company opened the account after setting up office fees in China to explore the possibilities of hotel deals in Asia.
“No deals, transactions or other business activities have ever materialized and since 2015, these office fees have been dormant,” Mr Garten said. “However, the bank account remains open, it has not been used for any other purpose.”
Mr. Garten will not identify the bank in China where the account is located. Until last year, China’s largest state-controlled bank rented three floors in the Trump Tower, a for-profit lease that draws accusations of conflict of interest for the president.
China remains an issue in the 2020 presidential campaign, from the presidential trade war to the emergence of the coronavirus epidemic to its belts. His campaign seeks to portray Mr. Biden as a “puppet” of China, who, as vice president, has misread the dangers posed by his growing power. Mr. Trump has sought to tar his opponent, even with extreme vulnerability or unsatisfactory claims about Hunter Biden’s business dealings while his father was in office.
“He’s like a vacuum cleaner – he follows his father around collecting,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Mr. Biden’s son recently. “What a disgrace. It is a family of crime. ”
His son Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyer Rudolph W. In the misleading claims made by surrogates like Juliani, the President has said that the younger Mr. Biden was in China with his father after. “Gone from China” with billions of dollars. Numerous news articles and fact-checking sites have explained that the huge figure was actually aimed at raising funds set by an investment company in which Hunter Biden acquired a 10 per cent stake after his father resigned. The pay firm received financial support from a large state-controlled bank, but it is not clear when the fundraising target was met, and there is no evidence that Hunter made large individual payments to the bidder.
As for the former vice president, he has not shown any income or business dealings in China, with financial announcements in public, with income tax returns he has voluntarily declared. However, there is evidence of Mr. Trump’s efforts to join numerous American companies that have long been doing business there – and the tax records for him and his companies provide new details about what the Times has obtained.
Like Russia, where he explored hotel and tower projects in Moscow without success, Mr. Trump has long sought a licensing deal in China. His efforts went at least as far back as 2006 when he filed trademark applications in Hong Kong and the mainland. Many government approvals came from China after he became president. (After the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, joined the White House staff, she also received Chinese trademark approval for her personal business.)
In 2008, Mr. Trump pushed forward an office fee tower project in Guangzhou that never got off the ground. But his efforts gained momentum with the introduction of Shanghai office fees in 2012, and tax records show that one of Mr. Trump’s China-related companies, THC China Development LLC, claimed a deduction of 84 84,000 for travel expenses, legal fees and office fees that year.
After effectively planting its flag there, Mr. Trump acquired a partner in the state’s grid corporation, one of the largest government-controlled enterprises in the country. The agency France-Press reported in 2016 that the partnership would involve licensing and operating in Beijing. Mr Trump was reportedly still moving forward with his first presidential campaign in the months leading up to the deal, but was abandoned after Chinese authorities seized the state grid in a corruption probe.
How much money Mr. Trump has spent running a business in China is difficult to determine precisely from tax records. Records show that over the years he has invested at least $ 192,000 in five small companies specially created to pursue projects there. Those companies have claimed at least 4 97,400 in business expenses since 2010, most recently as some small payments for taxes and accounting fees as of 2018.
But Mr. Trump’s plans in China are largely run by a separate company, Trump International Hotels Management – this is a Chinese bank account.
The company is directly owned by CHC China Development, but is also involved in the management of other Trump-branded assets worldwide, and it is not possible to discern from its tax records how much of its economic activity is related to China. It typically reports several million dollars in annual income and deductible expenses.
In 2017, the company recorded an extraordinarily large increase in revenue – some .5 17.5 million, which is more than the combined of the previous five years. Along with that, 15.1 million was withdrawn from the company’s capital account by Mr. Trump.
On the president’s public financial announcements that year, he reported large amounts of revenue and described it simply as “payment of management fees and other contracts.” One notable event at the company that is known to have happened in 2017 was the purchase of its management contract for the Soho Hotel in New York, which Bloomberg reportedly spent about million 6 million.
Mr Garten would not comment on the exact amount cited by Bloomberg, but said the deal represents a “significant portion” of the buyout company’s revenue and the rest of the money is not related to China.
Outside of China, Mr. Trump has had more success in attracting wealthy Chinese buyers to other countries for his wealth. Their hotels and towers in Las Vegas and Vancouver, British Columbia – locations known for attracting Chinese real estate investors – have found many Chinese buyers, and in at least one case have attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
During the 2016 campaign, a shell company controlled by a Chinese couple in Vancouver bought 11 units in the Las Vegas Tower, co-owned by Mr. Trump Casino’s metropolitan Phil Rafin, for 3.1 million. The owner of the Las Vegas-based financial services company told the Times that he was later interviewed by two FBI agents asking about the company behind the purchase, which he said used office addresses in his investment papers without their knowledge. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post.
Mr Garten said the Trump organization had “never been contacted by the FBI and was not aware of any investigations.”
In Vancouver, buyers of several Chinese units of Mr. Trump’s hotel and tower helped raise પ્રોજેક્ટ 8 million in license fees for the project in the year 2001, according to tax records. The project was controlled by the family of Tony Tia to Qian, the richest man in Malaysia, a Canadian-based firm that runs hotels in China and elsewhere. CNN As reported in 2018, Operation Vancouver was the subject of a competitive review of Ivanka Trump’s security clearance requirements.
And shortly after winning the 2016 election, Mr. Trump sold a penthouse in his Manhattan building to a Chinese-American businessman named Xiao Yan Chen, who bought a unit for .8 15.8 million, previously occupied by Ivanka Trump and her husband. In Ared F-Market Transactions, Jared Kushner. Mr Chen runs an international consulting firm and is reported to have high-level connections with government and political elites in China.
Mr. Trump’s tax records show he made at least ડો 5.6 million in capital gains from penthouse sales in his first year as president, 2017.
If Baker contributed to the report.
