Russian oligarch Trump never met paid Trump $95M for FL mansion, $60M more than Trump bought it for and the most expensive home sale in US history. Get this, this most expensive US home sale was never lived in after the sale and has been torn down.
And oh, their planes meet at airports for absolutely no reason. But there's nothing funny going on, the two men have never met. Bill Clinton showed us this trick already.
Oh yeah, our billionaire Commerce Secretary owns a foreign bank (Bank of Cyprus) used by Russian oligarchs to get their billions out of Russia. People who believe the Drain the Swamp meme, yes, they're stupid.
And Rybolovlev's spokesman is a former Trumpbart contributor, just to add another dot to this little puzzle.
'This is ridiculous': White House official denounces 'conspiracy' about Trump and Russian billionaire
Natasha Bertrand
19h 26,109
A private plane owned by a Russian oligarch who has ties to President Donald Trump and his secretary of commerce flew into cities where Trump was campaigning before the November election at least twice, flight data and photographs have shown.
The timing has raised questions about whether Trump met with the oligarch, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, while their planes were parked at the same time in Las Vegas in late October and then in Charlotte, North Carolina, in early November.
A White House official called the speculation "ridiculous" and characterized it as akin to a "conspiracy" in an email to Business Insider on Tuesday.
"No member of the Trump campaign or Mr. Trump met with Mr. Rybolovlev during the campaign or any other time," said the official, who requested anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The official continued: "No one was even aware of the plane until receiving a similar email about this yesterday. For a press corps so obsessed with evidence, proof and feigning a general disgust at even the hint of conspiracy, this is pretty rich."
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and McClatchy have recently mainstreamed suspicion about the peculiar timing of Rybolovlev's jet's travels, particularly the plane's presence in Charlotte on the same day Trump landed there to campaign in nearby Concord, North Carolina.
"This is garbage," another White House official said when asked about the reports.
Photos had been circulating on social media of Rybolovlev's Airbus A319, dubbed M-KATE, along with theories about why the jet — which spends most of its time flying between major European cities like London, Berlin, and Zurich, with sporadic trips to Los Angeles, Miami, and the Caribbean, according to flight records — flew to Charlotte the same day Trump did and stayed there for 22 hours afterward.
Flight-tracking data reviewed by Business Insider showed that M-KATE's stops in Las Vegas and Charlotte on October 30 and November 3 are indeed outliers.
A 90-minute stop en route to Charlotte in the small city of Concord — where airport officials said the plane took on fuel — also raises questions, given how unlikely it is that a plane of that size would have needed to refuel to travel the 24 miles to Charlotte. Taking off only to begin an immediate descent would have also wasted fuel.
 Screenshot/FlightRadar24
But the speculation about possible preelection encounters between Trump and Rybolovlev has also been fueled by the fact that it wouldn't have been their first.
Rybolovlev, a multibillionaire who was an early investor in one of the world's most lucrative fertilizer companies, bought a Palm Beach property from Trump for $95 million in 2008, two years after Trump had put it on the market for $125 million (after purchasing it for $41 million in 2004.)
2008 was a rough year for Trump. According to PolitiFact, that was the year Trump Entertainment Resorts missed a $53.1 million bond interest payment and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reorganize.
Rybolovlev's cash infusion into Trump's bank account is believed to be the most expensive home sale in US history. At that point, big banks were highly reluctant to loan to Trump, who had lost them money, as he wrote in his 2007 book, " Think Big: Make it Happen in Business and Life."
"I figured it was the bank's problem, not mine," Trump wrote, according to The New York Times. "What the hell did I care? I actually told one bank, 'I told you you shouldn't have loaned me that money. I told you the goddamn deal was no good.'"
Rybolovlev has never lived in the mansion and has since torn it down. Both he and Trump have insisted that they never met at any point during the historic transaction.
"The president has said on several occasions, he sold a home in Palm Beach to a Russian once — that person is Mr. Rybolovlev," the White House official said. "Mr. Trump did not meet with him during that transaction either, which took place in 2008."
Reports over the past few days have also shone light on ties between Rybolovlev and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. As of 2013, Rybolovlev owned the largest share in the Bank of Cyprus — roughly 9.9%. One year later, Ross bought out the Cypriot bank from Russian oligarchs who had been accused of using it to move their money to offshore accounts. At the time, Cyprus banks held $8.5 billion to $37 billion worth of Russian money, according to a German intelligence report cited by Der Spiegel.
Anna-Catherine Sendgikoski, a limo driver who had been waiting to pick someone up at the Charlotte airport's terminal for private jets, told McClatchy that Trump and Rybolovlev's planes appeared to be about 300 feet apart on the tarmac the morning of November 3. But she said she saw Trump walk off his plane and directly into his motorcade and didn't see anyone get in or out of Rybolovlev's plane.
Reached for comment, Rybolovlev's spokesman, Brian Cattell, said, "Mr. Rybolovlev and Mr. Trump have never met." He declined to comment on why Rybolovlev's plane had been in Charlotte on November 3 and whether Rybolovlev was on it.
businessinsider.com
Trump, Russian billionaire say they’ve never met, but their jets did — in Charlotte
Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev says he has never met Donald Trump. He bought a Florida mansion from Trump in 2008, and his jet was at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport when Trump’s jet was also there in November 2016.Lionel Cironneau AP
BY KEVIN G. HALL, ADAM BELL, RICK ROTHACKER AND GREG GORDON
McClatchy Washington Bureau
CHARLOTTE, N.C.
Five days before the November election, a Russian billionaire’s jet wheeled to a stop at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
Less than 90 minutes later, Donald Trump’s campaign jet arrived on the same tarmac for an afternoon campaign rally in nearby Concord.
Who was aboard Dmitry Rybolovlev’s luxurious jet and whether the planes’ near-simultaneous arrival facilitated another previously undisclosed Russian contact with Trump,his family or campaign associates remain unanswered questions.
The White House dismisses the matter as conspiratorial. A spokesman for Rybolovlev declined to say why he was in Charlotte. But their jets shared the tarmac at Charlotte for several hours before Trump left for a 7 p.m. rally near Raleigh on the same day.
Trump and Rybolovlev, however, agree on this: They say they have never met, although Trump sold a Palm Beach mansion to the Russian fertilizer magnate for $95 million eight years earlier. Rybolovlev recently bulldozed the mansion and is selling the oceanfront property.
The proximity of their intersecting flights, coupled with evidence that Rybolovlev’s plane was also in Las Vegas briefly on the same day as Trump, Oct. 30, has fueled internet plots.
“This is ridiculous,” said a White House spokesperson, who was not authorized to speak for the record. “No member of the Trump campaign or Trump family traveled or met with Mr. Rybolovlev during the campaign or any other time. No one was even aware of the plane until receiving this email.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and author David Cay Johnston discussed Rybolovlev’s plane on the air last Friday, and numerous blogs and partisan websites have speculated on the intersection.
Rybolovlev could put the speculation to rest, but his longtime spokesman — who has past ties to London operations of the alt-right news site Breitbart — wouldn’t say why the Russian billionaire’s airplane was in North Carolina.
“There are a lot of rumors and farfetched theories circulating online but none of them have any basis in fact,” said Brian Cattell, founding partner of CLP & Partners in New York. “Mr. Rybolovlev has never met Donald Trump.”
Cattell declined to say whether the oligarch had been aboard the plane when it landed in Charlotte, whether anyone associated with Trump was a passenger or whether its arrival was in any way connected with Trump’s campaign. If Rybolovlev were somehow assisting the campaign, it would constitute an illegal foreign donation.
Cattell was asked to explain why the plane was in Charlotte for nearly 22 hours before departing for Southern California at 8:39 a.m. on Nov. 4.
“Nothing further to add . . . I am afraid,” said Cattell, a past contributor to Breitbart, the alt-right news organization that was headed by Steve Bannon, who’s now Trump’s special White House adviser. Cattell said he is an external representative for “the Rybolovlev family office,” but until 2011 he was chairman of The Bow Group, a British conservative think tank. The Bow Group’s webpage includes a screen shot of Cattell on Russia Today, the television network that U.S. intelligence agencies say is a Kremlin propaganda tool.
[ Nice. Rybolovlev has Trumpbart/Russia Today connection. Yes, he is politically connected to Trump's base. ]
A look at flight records for Rybolovlev’s aircraft over the past year shows numerous trips to Moscow and Switzerland, which he calls home. On Oct. 30, his jet landed in Las Vegas at 12:15 p.m. At 11 a.m. that day, Trump appeared before a crowd of 8,400 people at The Venetian, a hotel and casino owned by major Republican campaign benefactor Sheldon Adelson, who ultimately backed Trump’s presidential bid.
Rybolovlev’s plane was on the ground for two hours and two minutes. The plane had paused in Las Vegas on a trip from Burbank, California, to New York.
After the U.S. election, the plane spent time in the Caribbean islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. Martin and made several trips to Miami and Burbank.
Rybolovlev, 50, made his fortune in the fertilizer business but no longer owns industrial assets. Wealth estimators say his fortune has shrunk from an estimated high of $13 billion to somewhere between $7 billion and $9 billion. He now runs an investment fund and is a part owner of the AS Monaco soccer team. He has been often photographed with Prince Albert II, a patron of the team.
Flight records show Rybolovlev’s plane was mostly in Europe and Russia for the first seven months of last year. It landed at Washington’s Dulles airport on July 31, stayed about 22 hours and left for New York. From August until late October it was all over Europe, including stops in Hungary, Croatia, Turkey and Greece. It then remained in the United States until the Caribbean swing that began in early December.
Rybolovlev made news in last year’s Panama Papers stories because of his offshore companies, which he used to effectively camouflage his ownership of high-priced art.
In 2010, the Russian oligarch became a nearly 10 percent shareholder in Bank of Cyprus, which catered to Russian businessmen. During a Cypriot banking crisis in 2013, he worked to shore it up, many news organizations reported at the time. Cyprus received help from Russia, whose state-owned companies stood to lose money on island investments.
Rybolovlev famously purchased Trump’s Palm Beach mansion for almost $95 million in 2008. The transaction made headlines because he paid almost $60 million more than Trump had, and Rybolovlev bought it amid the U.S. financial crisis, which imperiled real estate values.
Soon after the purchase, Rybolovlev’s marriage to wife Elena crumbled and she later was awarded what was believed to be the highest divorce settlement of modern times, $4.5 billion. It was eventually reduced, and the couple settled out of court. Even as Rybolovlev was buying Trump’s mansion, his wife accused him in court documents of infidelity and lavish sex parties on his yacht.
So why was the Russian oligarch, or at least his plane, in North Carolina just before the U.S. elections?
mcclatchydc.com
The Airbus 319 with the registration tail letters MKATE landed at Concord Regional Airport at 10:47 a.m. after an 89-minute flight from New York.
Concord, a small city neighboring Charlotte, is accustomed to seeing millionaire NASCAR drivers leave the airport in limousines, but this was extraordinary.
“Even Trump’s airplane is not that nice,” said Mike Dockery, president of Concord Air Center, who remembers looking up the tail numbers after the luxury jet, about the size of a 737-300, parked at his maintenance hangar. “It looks like a sheikh’s airplane.”
Officials at the city-owned airport could not provide details of the brief stop but confirmed that the jet did take on fuel there. Dockery’s son saw a man get off the plane and ride to the terminal in a golf cart, although it is not clear who he was. Trump’s motorcade arrived in Concord a few hours later.
The top limousine companies in the area, Silver Fox and Rose Chauffeured Transportation Ltd., have no record of ferrying Rybolovlev anywhere that day. The Ritz-Carlton and the historic Dunhill hotel, where celebrities have stayed in uptown Charlotte, have no record of Rybolovlev there under his name.
After an hour and 20 minutes in Concord, the Russian’s plane made a 24-minute hop to Charlotte Douglas International Airport, where it landed at 12:34 pm., according to publicly available flight records obtained by McClatchy.
Around 2 p.m. on Nov. 3, limo driver Anna-Catherine Sendgikoski was waiting for a client at the Charlotte airport’s terminal for private jets.
A plane with the letters MKATE caught her attention. It lacked the numbers displayed on most U.S.-registered planes, meaning it was foreign-owned. She took a picture, looked it up and learned the owner was a rich Russian.
About 20 minutes later, she said, a jet with Trump’s name emblazoned on the side landed. Sendgikoski took pictures of it, too.
Sendgikoski often posts on Twitter about her dislike of Trump. And that’s where she posted her photos on Nov. 3.
“It was just suspect to me, you know,” she said, adding that “it just seemed strange” that there was a Russian aircraft near Trump’s plane.
Sendgikoski said she watched Trump walk off his plane into a waiting motorcade. She said she didn’t see anyone get in or out of the Russian plane, which was about 300 feet from Trump’s.
It’s about a 40- to 45-minute drive from the Charlotte airport to the Cabarrus Arena and Events Center. Trump arrived there shortly before the rally started, recalled arena General Manager Kenny Robinson. That suggests Trump had little time before the event began. No one on the Trump staff had requested the use of a private area. The candidate and his entourage were sequestered behind a space set off with drapes and pipes.
Mike Tallent, chairman of the Cabarrus County Republican Party, attended the rally and remembers that Trump didn’t linger before or after the event.
“He came in, he came out, he did his thing and he was gone,” Tallent said.
Members of his family, however, lingered in North Carolina for the entire week. Son Eric and his wife, Lara, made appearances in Fayetteville and Raleigh. Daughter Ivanka was in Charlotte on Nov. 2. Donald Trump visited North Carolina more than a dozen times during the campaign season and carried the state over Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 4 percentage points.
Read more here: mcclatchydc.com |
