The list of troubling relationships between Donald Trump and numerous foreign nationals is getting too long to list – from Argentina to Japan to Kuwait to the Filipino trade envoy for his literally homicidal leader, Rodrigo Duterte.

This week, the Democratic Coalition uncovered two Trump companies registered in Cyprus, the tax haven and money laundering island serving Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarchs. Senior advisor Scott Dworkin released the information on Trump’s Cyprus shell companies for the Democratic Coalition via Twitter as part of his #TrumpLeaks investigations:

One of Trump’s companies in Cyprus was opened in 2008, during the height of the global financial crisis. “#TrumpLeaks is different than Wikileaks,” says Scott Dworkin on Twitter, “[It’s] run by Americans. All [documents] obtained legally.” Trump’s ownership of a pair of offshore companies in Cyprus raises the most direct link yet exposed to the Russian oligarch class. An additional 250 Trump named companies in Russia discovered by the Dworkin Report in November. Donald Trump has an extensive business presence on a Mediterranean island with major Russian ties and he just made a Cabinet appointment of the Vice Chair of the island’s largest bank. Sponsored Links



It’s clear that Donald Trump could have other financial interests in his relationship with Wilbur Ross, or with Russia’s billionaire class, or to Vladimir Putin or one of his agents. The proof is the existence of two companies in a small island nation with a microscopic GDP and a tremendous amount of bank deposits. Sponsored Links Owning an off-shore company isn’t itself illegal, but without transparency, it presents a natural conflict of interest scenario and the specter of direct ties to foreign adversaries. And as the Panama Papers exposed, off-shore shell companies in tax havens and money laundering centers are considered instrumental in government corruption around the world.

Trump’s international business ties are already considered a constitutional violation waiting to happen by bipartisan legal experts and political operatives, including even the notorious author of Clinton Cash. There’s no easy way for oversight of how an American government official would use such companies, besides reviewing their US Tax returns.

Notoriously, Donald Trump has refused to release any tax returns whatsoever, after earlier promising full disclosure during the Republican primary campaign, which plainly hid from public view, that these shell companies exist, tucked into off-shore tax havens like Cyprus.