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Donald Trump Meets With His Indian Business Partners Despite Blind Trust
Promises | The Huffington Post

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58309ad8e4b058ce7aab78fe

Donald Trump Meets With His Indian Business Partners Despite Blind Trust
PromisesCan these conflicts of interest be resolved?
Paul Blumenthal Money in Politics Reporter, The Huffington Post
</us/author/paul-blumenthal>

1 hour ago

Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Donald Trump attends the launch of Trump Tower in Mumbai, India in 2014
with Abhishek Lodha of the Lodha Group.

WASHINGTON ― Exactly a week after winning the presidential election, Donald
Trump <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/Donald%20Trump,> took time out
to meet with Indian business partners and his three eldest children at
Trump Tower in Manhattan. The meeting came despite the president-elect’s
assurances that he was handing off his business to his children in a “blind
trust
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/14/giuliani-says-trump-cant-do-a-blind-trust-because-it-would-basically-put-his-children-out-of-work/>”
to avoid potential conflicts of interest while serving in the nation’s
highest office.

Trump held the talks with business partners Sagar Chordia, Atul Chordia and
Kalpesh Mehta on Tuesday, the Indian newspaper The Economic Times
<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/donald-trump-meets-indian-partners-hails-pm-modis-work/articleshow/55465060.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst>
first
reported. Ivanka <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/ivanka-trump/>, Donald
Jr. and Eric Trump, who attended the meeting, are supposed to be heading
the trust, managing their father’s assets and business portfolio. They also
sit on the executive committee of the presidential transition team.

Two days later, the president-elect met with Japan’s Prime Minister
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shinzo-abe-donald-trump-first-meeting_us_582dae75e4b099512f8101eb>
Shinzo Abe in New York City, his first visit from a foreign leader. Ivanka
Trump, executive vice president of development and acquisitions for the
Trump Organization, was also in attendance. She is supposed to be running
the Trump Organization separate from her father’s administration to avoid
any potential conflicts of interest or their appearance. The Trump
family appears
to be struggling mightily to avoid these conflicts
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-conflict-of-interest_us_582f8e62e4b030997bbf83a2>
.

“It looks to us that he’s clearly not able to maintain a blind trust and
still keep the company under his ownership and, frankly, control,” said
Jordan Libowitz, communications director for the ethics watchdog Citizens
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “We really think that the best
thing he can do is sell the company outside of the family and place the
money from the sale into an actual blind trust.”

The Trump Organization is currently involved in five different projects in
India
<http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2016/10/24/this-is-how-real-estate-projects-bearing-donald-trumps-name-are-selling-in-india/>,
at least two of which are with the Chordias’ Panchshil Realty. Mehta is
Trump’s personal representative to India through the company Tribeca
Developers and works with other companies. Luxury condos built by Panchshil
already bear Trump’s name in the Indian cities of Mumbai and Pune.
Meanwhile, the Lodha Group is building a different Trump-branded condo in
Mumbai. In the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, Trump is partnering with Ireo,
another Indian developer, to build an office complex and M3M Group to build
another residential condo tower.

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE via Getty Images
A billboard advertises sales of the luxury condos at Trump Tower Mumbai in
India in June.

Trump does not directly own any of the luxury condo or office buildings
planned or open in India. Instead, he licenses his name to the projects and
receives payment for their use of the Trump brand. The total value to
developers of all five projects is $1.5 billion. That could rise as
Panchshil is looking into building a second Trump building in Pune.

The meeting between Trump, his children and business partners included the
discussion of Indian government policy and their business interests,
according to the Economic Times report
<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/donald-trump-meets-indian-partners-hails-pm-modis-work/articleshow/55465060.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst>.
Mehta, The Trump Organization’s representative in India, told the business
newspaper that Donald Trump Jr. was pleased with the pace of growth in
India and was hopeful about expansion in the future.

Mehta told the paper that he did not get to talk to the president-elect
about the Indian government’s sudden policy implementation of currency
demonetization
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/11/18/world/asia/ap-as-india-currency-chaos.html>
this
month, but “his kids knew about it and they termed it as an incredibly bold
move.”

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.

Further evidence that it could be impossible for the president-elect to
disconnect himself from his foreign businesses comes from a key diplomatic
appointment that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte made days before
Trump’s election victory. Duterte announced that Jose E.B. Antonio
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/world/asia/donald-trump-philippines-jose-antonio.html>
would
be the country’s envoy to Washington, D.C., for trade and investment.
Antonio, chairman of Century Properties Group, is Trump’s business partner
in the Philippines. His business is currently building the 57-story Trump
Tower at Century City in the capital Manila.

For countries and foreign leaders more used to a corrupt government
environment, there will be numerous opportunities to curry favor with the
incoming president through his businesses. Trump’s business empire is
already courting them for profit.

The Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.,
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-conflict-of-interest_us_582f578be4b058ce7aaaf3c0>
hosted
an informative session for foreign diplomats this past week explaining how
these dignitaries could rent rooms during a Trump presidency, according to The
Washington Post
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/2016/11/18/9da9c572-ad18-11e6-977a-1030f822fc35_story.html>.
This would, in effect, involve foreign governments putting money directly
into the president’s pocket while diplomats visited Washington, D.C., to
conduct official business.

One anonymous diplomat from an Asian country explained to the Post
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/2016/11/18/9da9c572-ad18-11e6-977a-1030f822fc35_story.html>,
“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can
tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to
his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’”
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Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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