![]() ![]() Scotland’s leader, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, has held firm that politicians don’t have the power to issue unexplained wealth orders. ![]() The British government is forcing her to explain how she bought a golf course, spent $16.5 million on a London home, and splurged another $22 million at the luxury department store Harrods.īut Scottish government officials-despite their overwhelming distaste for Trump and his authoritarianism-have yet to use this investigative power, and Avaaz is trying to force their hand. The first major case there is an ongoing probe into the riches obtained by the wife of a Azerbaijani banker jailed back home for embezzling millions from a state financial institution. adopted the practice in 2017, and has only started to utilize it-setting off court battles. But the threat is real: Refuse to answer, and the government could seize your property. It’s a civil mechanism, not a criminal one. ![]() In 2015, it passed the “fourth money laundering directive,” allowing governments to employ something called an “unexplained wealth order” to force rich, politically connected people to explain how they paid for a suspiciously acquired asset. And yet, when it came to build these golf courses in Scotland, the story was that Trump came up with hundreds of millions of dollars.įor years, the European Union has been developing tools to counteract modern money laundering tactics, giving bureaucrats the ability to pierce corporate veils and dig into financials. He’s famous for being able to secure financing, particularly from Deutsche Bank, when he’s in a rut and no one else will trust him. Trump is a real estate tycoon who’s called himself the “ king of debt” for a reason: It’s always safer to play with someone else’s money. Still, Trump operations there previously claimed to have spent more than $150 million in renovations, sparking even more questions about why the family continues to pour so much money into a business venture that has yet to pan out.Īs The New Yorker and Mother Jones have pointed out in the past, Trump’s sudden foray into Scotland-during which he allegedly shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars-makes little sense. As the Scottish legislator Colin Smyth put it during a parliament meeting earlier this year: “He has been an absentee owner of Trump Turnberry since he bought it, and with the financial losses being made year-on-year, the Trump Organization has been as successful at running the resort as the founder was at being President.” ![]()
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