COINCIDENCE OR EVIDENCE? YACHTS OF TRUMP FINANCIAL BACKER AND RUSSIAN OLIGARCH SEEN TOGETHER

Donald Trump faces dark days after the alleged involvement of his staff with Russian hackers. And evidence of ties between the newly elected president of the USA and Russian oligarchs might even come from yachts.

But let’s go in order.

Yesterday, FBI revealed secret investigation into Donald Trump team’s possible links to Russian hackers during US President election. 

So, while federal investigators are looking into possible links between Moscow and members of Donald Trump’s campaign team, all eyes are also on everything concerning tycoon’s staff. That’s where yachts come in. Last Friday, Anna, a 67-metre Feadship was docked at North Sound, a bay in Virgin Gorda, one of the British Virgin Islands and a very popular destination for the spring cruises of many megayacht owners. As night fell, while many boats were going away, Sea Owl, another 62-metre Feadship featuring green bulwarks, sidled up. A Caribbean bay hosting two superyachts is nothing strange but the same cannot be said about the identity of the two owners. The owner of the first yacht was the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, a man who has made his fortune in fertilizer potash and who – according to Forbes – is the 12th richest man in Russia with his 7.3 billion dollars.

The second owner was Robert Mercer, the most excited financial supporter of Donald Trump.

Maybe a coincidence but, in the last few days, Rybolovlev repeatedly said that he has no common interests with the blond tenant of the White House and denied any possible links during the election campaign. An Escusatio due to a considerable precedent: in 2008, the owner of the potash producer Uralkali paid the highest price never seen before for a mansion in the US: $ 95 million for a 5,700-square-metre villas in North County Road, Palm Beach, Florida. The seller was the future president of the United States. At the time, many people wondered why he had paid so much: $13 million more than the most expensive Palm Beach mansion sold to that moment. The official answer was that the property was acquired for investment purposes.

However, other “strange” coincidences occurred. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, Rybolovlev‘s private jet was seen in the same cities as Trump during the election campaign and even after his election. Last October, the plane of the Russian oligarch landed in Las Vegas for an hour, just 37 minutes after Trump’s plane had departed from the same airport. A month later, just five days before elections, the Airbus 319 of the industrialist currently living in Monte Carlo, in the Principality of Monaco, landed in Charlotte, in North Carolina, just 90 minutes before Trump’s plane.

The last coincidence happened last month, when Rybolovlev’s plane landed at the Miami International Airport while the president was encountering the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Mar-a-Lago, the mansion of Palm Beach bought by Trump in 1985 and previously used by the US government as a “winter White House”.

Since Russia is the first suspect for the hackerage operation against Hillary Clinton, the Trump’s democratic opponent defeated at last elections, revealed by Wikileaks, it is not surprising that possible links between Trump and modern Tzars are under the microscope.

And the Yankee real estate developer is certainly surrounded by men able to acting as intermediaries. The ex-election campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, the former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, the attorney general Jeff Sessions and the ex-campaign adviser Carter Page have ties with Russia. Donald Trump himself develops real estate business with Russian societies in Fort Lauderdale (Florida) and New York.

Possible connections would be guaranteed by the Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, an important shareholder in Bank of Cyprus, the same bank involved in some affairs with the Russian president Vladimir Putin (Rybolovlev, too, is a shareholder of the bank). Furthermore, Ross owns a villa just near Trump’s one in Palm Beach.

Another link – or strange coincidence, if you prefer – is traceable to Deutsche Bank, the former General Manager of which is currently the chairman of the Bank of Cyprus. Deutsche Bank is Trump’s major creditor with about $ 300 million and it was already forced to pay a 425 million fine to New York State to settle charges that it helped Russian investors launder as much as $10 billion.

So, we can say that the so-called Russiangate is really full of strange coincidences.