move aside Deutsche bank....
the timing here falls in just fine with the court ruling that 'they didnt mean it' which let all of wallst
and goons like this off the hook for about anything they do did or will do, ever.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexand ... b6e0e948f9Trump's Biggest Potential Conflict Of Interest Is Hiding In Plain Sight
Feb 13, 2018 The largest American office of China's largest bank sits on the 20th floor of Trump Tower, six levels below the desk where Donald Trump built an empire and wrested a presidency. It's hard to get a glimpse inside. There do not appear to be any public photos of the office,
the bank doesn't welcome visitors, and a man guards the elevators downstairs--one of the perks of forking over an estimated $2 million a year for the space.Trump Tower officially
lists the tenant as the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, but make no mistake who's paying the rent: the Chinese government, which owns a majority of the company. And while the landlord is technically the Trump Organization, make no mistake who's cashing those millions: the president of the United States, who has placed day-to-day management with his sons but retains 100% ownership. This lease expires in October 2019, according to a debt prospectus obtained by Forbes. So if you assume that the Trumps want to keep this lucrative tenant, then Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. could well be negotiating right now over how many millions the Chinese government will pay the sitting president.
Unless he has already taken care of it: In September 2015 then-candidate Trump boasted to Forbes that he had "just renewed" the lease, around the time he was gearing up his campaign.
It's a conflict of interest unprecedented in American history. But hardly unanticipated. The Founding Fathers specifically built this contingency into the Constitution through the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits U.S. officials from accepting gifts, titles or "emoluments" from foreign governments. In Federalist 75, Alexander Hamilton framed the threat thus: "An avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state to the acquisition of wealth." Scholars have been debating what exactly constitutes an "emolument" since the moment Trump won the election, and nearly 200 congressional Democrats sued the president over possible violations in June. Much of the yammering in this area surrounds Trump's hotels, especially the one in Washington, D.C., which has billed $268,000 in hotel rooms and catering to the Saudi government, and his international licensing deals, which allow foreign tycoons and hucksters, many with connections to their local governments, to pay the Trump Organization more than $5 million a year in order to profit from the president's name in far-flung locales.
But that's all small potatoes. The real money in the Trump empire
comes from commercial tenants like the Chinese bank. Forbes estimates these tenants pay a collective $175 million a year or so to the president. And they do so anonymously. Federal laws, drafted without envisioning a real estate billionaire as president, require Trump to publicly disclose the shell companies he owns--but not the hundreds of businesses pouring money into them or even the extent of the money involved.http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ ... ct/articleNov 28, 2016
When Chinese tenant's lease in Trump Tower ends, conflict may begin---
The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., a state-controlled enterprise and the world's biggest lender by assets, is due to renegotiate its lease at Trump Tower in Manhattan during Donald Trump's presidency — a business matter that may raise constitutional questions for the incoming president, ethicists say.
The bank's lease is slated to end in October 2019, adding its renewal to the list of potential conflicts of interest for president-elect Trump, who has vowed to slap steep tariffs on Chinese imports and declare China a currency manipulator. The lease is no small matter for the Trump Organization. ICBC was Trump Tower's largest office tenant as of 2012, occupying 11 percent of its office space, according to mortgage documents filed by Wells Fargo & Co. that year.