New York’s Trump SoHo is a well-documented case of Donald Trump dealing with dubious or even criminal characters and benefiting from anonymously sourced funds.

The project involved Trump entering into a licensing deal with real estate companies Bayrock Group and the Sapir Organization to develop a 46-story tower in New York City’s prestigious SoHo neighborhood.
Reports suggest that Bayrock had several links to organized crime. The company was said to have an association with Viktor Khrapunov, former energy minister of Kazakhstan and ex-mayor of the capital, Almaty. The city of Almaty filed a federal lawsuit against Khrapunov in 2014, accusing him of looting hundreds of millions of dollars of public assets.

Bayrock’s managing director was Felix Sater. Sater is a Russian-born U.S. citizen who was convicted of fraud and has been accused of having links with the Mafia, something that he has denied. Sater has described himself as a senior advisor to Donald Trump. He claimed that he had an office down the hall from the Trump family and carried a Trump Organization business card.