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FORBES.COM JUNE 30, 20 19THE^FORBESINVESTIGATIONTrump with Michael Cohen:
Three years ago, Michael Cohen was
working on a potential Trump tower in
Moscow. Today he is in prison for crimes
that include lying to Congress about
the project.No one outside of the Trump Organization has more firsthand knowledge of Donald Trump’s
connections to Russia than Felix Sater. In 2006, he scouted a potential deal in Moscow with the
president’s children Don Jr. and Ivanka. In 2007, he stood alongside Trump at a launch party for a
hotel Sater had helped get built, Trump SoHo, which marketed partially to Russian buyers. Andduring the 2016 presidential campaign, Sater
helped plan a giant Trump tower in Moscow.
“Here’s to fun times,” he says, hoisting his
martini glass in the air.
Fun times indeed. Special Counsel Robert
Mueller’s 448-page report highlights three
separate proposals to develop a Trump property
in Moscow around the time of the election. Yet
key details have remained vague. Forbes got in
touch with the people at the center of allthree—and uncovered concrete answers to
fundamental questions about Trump’s plans in
Russia.
Such as who was actually going to pay for the
project. Trump, now more of a licensor than
builder, certainly wasn’t planning on putting in
much of his own money. And according to Sater,
who brokered the proposal that extended
furthest into the campaign, nor was Trump’s
official partner, Andrey Rozov. Instead, Sater says,
he was cooking up a plan to raise
huge sums from additional investors,
including two of Vladimir Putin’s
closest cronies, Boris and Arkady
Rotenberg. “We would have gone to
them and asked them for four or five
hundred million dollars cash,” Sater
says.
Another big, previously unsettled
question: How much money could
Trump have made in all of this? Both
Mueller and former Trump attorney
Michael Cohen have suggested,
vaguely, “hundreds of millions.” After
mining business agreements and surveying real
estate experts in Moscow, however, Forbes
believes that’s almost impossible. It seems more
likely that Trump would have walked away with
roughly $35 million up front and $2.6 million or→ It’s getting late, and Felix Sater—a
onetime Trump partner, two-time
convicted felon and longtime federal
informant—sits in the back of a New
York City restaurant, ready for a drink.
“A very dirty martini, Russian vodka,”
he tells the waiter. “A collusion martini.”