Trump has an undisclosed Chinese bank account, The New York Times discovered
President Trump maintains a bank account in China, The New York Times reports, and his tax records show that he spent at least a decade attempting, unsuccessfully, to get licensing deals while pursuing other projects in the country.
The Times, drawing on Trump's tax records, found that he has three foreign bank accounts — the other two are in Britain and Ireland — and none of them appear on his public financial disclosures because they are held under corporate names. The account in China is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management LLC, which paid $188,561 in taxes in China while trying to secure licensing deals from 2013 to 2015.
Trump first started attempting to get licensing deals in China in 2006, the Times reports, and tax records show he specifically created five small companies as part of this endeavor, investing $192,000. He filed multiple trademark applications in Hong Kong and mainland China in 2006, and several were approved after he became president.
Trump International Hotels Management is involved in management of Trump-branded properties around the world, and directly owns THC China Development. It typically only reported a few million dollars in annual income and deductions, but in 2017, the company reported $17.5 million in revenue — more than in the previous five years combined, the Times reports. At the same time, the tax records show, Trump made a $15.1 million withdrawal from the company's capital account. On his public financial disclosures that year, Trump described the revenue figure as "management fees and other contract payments."
Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told the Times the company "opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes" associated with doing business there. Trump established an office in Shanghai in order to "explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia," Garten added, but "no deals, transactions, or other business activities ever materialized and, since 2015, the office has remained inactive. Though the bank account remains open, it has never been used for any other purpose." He would not name the bank in China where Trump has an account.
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