NEW YORK - December 20, 2017, Free Speech for People (FSFP), a non-partisan legal advocacy organization, delivered letters to Joon Kim, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and to New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, calling on each of their offices to investigate whether the Trump Organization and its executives, including President Trump, have been involved in criminal activity at the Trump Ocean Club Panama.

A recent report by Global Witness titled Narco-a-Lago: Money Laundering at the Trump Ocean Club Panama provides substantial new evidence in support of these investigations. The report describes several highly suspicious transactions during the Trump Ocean Club’s 2006-07 pre-construction sales period. One buyer was a notorious Colombian narcotics trafficker who the previous U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York described as the “Bernie Madoff of Colombia.” And the Narco-a-Lago report alleges that a key broker attracted multiple Russian and Eastern European buyers with suspected links to criminal activity. Furthermore, money laundering may have continued even after the Trump Ocean Club’s formal opening in July 2011.

“The Trump Organization appears to have cultivated a practice of deliberate ignorance of money laundering at some of its foreign projects. This was unacceptable even before its entanglement with the White House, but now that the Trump Organization and the White House have effectively merged, a criminal investigation—and potential revocation of the Trump Organization’s corporate charter—is even more urgent,” says Ron Fein, Legal Director of Free Speech For People.

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The letter to Joon Kim, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and to Eric Schneiderman, Attorney General of New York, follows up on three prior letters that were sent in February, March, and November in which Free Speech For People set forth the long history of alleged illegal conduct by the Trump Organization, both before and after President Trump’s inauguration.

In previous letters to Attorney General Schneiderman, Free Speech For People urged the attorney general to open an investigation into whether to revoke the corporate charter of the Trump Organization under a New York law that authorizes him to dissolve a corporation for persistently illegal conduct or abuse of its powers contrary to the public policy of the state. This new letter provides yet more fuel for that investigation.

All letters are publicly available on Free Speech For People’s website. Free Speech For People is encouraging members of the public to sign a petition urging the Attorney General to pursue this investigation, and to contact his office to voice support: https://freespeechforpeople.org/revoke-trump-charter/

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