As the legal net tightens, the ‘House of Trump is crumbling’
When Donald Trump announced plans in 2006 to build a golf complex on ancient sand dunes on the Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland he told reporters it was love at first sight. “As soon as I saw it there was no question about it,” he said. It would be the world’s “greatest golf course”.
This week Trump International Scotland became a central element of a case that looks poised to dominate his post-presidential life, and could even put him behind bars.
Local fishermen denounced Trump as a “loudmouth bully” during construction of the course. Environmentalists warned the development would destroy the natural habitat, and sure enough it did inflict such damage that the site was stripped of its protected status.
But none of this deflected Trump from his goal. Today, the Scottish complex stands as a “premier luxury golf” experience replete with five-star hotel and helicopter landing pad, at a bargain membership of £2,595 ($3,518) a year.
Fifteen years on, the property has done wonders for its owner. That is, if you measure success according to the idiosyncratic accounting style of Donald Trump.
He bought the 2,000 acres (809 hectares) site at Menie in 2006 for $12.6m. Within five short years it was valued by the Trump Organization in its financial statements at $161m, an increase of almost 13 times.
By 2014, the windswept Scottish holding was put at $436m.
The hike caught the attention of Letitia James, New York state’s progressive attorney general known for her relentless pursuit of the rich and powerful. How the Scottish property came to rise meteorically in value is one of the matters she is exploring in her continuing investigation into Trump Organization finances. [Continue reading…]