VANCOUVER—A StarMetro search into a Vancouver-registered firm — revealed as the conduit for a C$3.3-million payment last year to prominent Republican and Donald Trump campaign fund co-chair Elliott Broidy — has only added to the mystery around a growing international scandal.

At first, no obvious signs of the company Xiemen Investments Ltd. were found at two separate addresses: one contained in invoices released by the Associated Press on Tuesday and another in British Columbia’s corporate registry. Multiple attempts to find Xiemen’s president, John E. Gibson, for comment were unsuccessful.

A 2017 invoice shows Xiemen’s address as a suite at 545 Clyde Ave. in West Vancouver. StarMetro visited the office complex, finding the suite occupied by accounting firm PVKS, formerly Pawluk, Voigt, Kaye and Such. A staff member there said she’d never heard of Xiemen.

StarMetro later reached by phone PVKS partner Randy Kaye, who asked if it was a prank call. His firm is a small accounting outfit, he said, and he had “never heard of” Xiemen.

“Is this a joke or something?” Kaye asked. “Really, this is so far-fetched; there’s no such company here ... No one with that company name works here or has any connections with us whatsoever.”

According to B.C. corporate records, Xiemen was incorporated in March 2012 at a suite at 1090 West Georgia St. in Vancouver. The firm’s president was registered as John E. Gibson, a resident of Plettenberg Bay, South Africa. Xiemen’s latest annual filings in March 2018 use the same address, with Gibson still president.

StarMetro also visited that Vancouver address; Xiemen did not have an office there, either. The unit does include an accountancy and two law firms.

At last, one of those law firms, Smetheram and Company Tax and Business Law, said in an email Friday that it “is the registered and records office for the company.”

“Other than that, we have no comment,” lawyer Donald Smetheram said.

Generally, such arrangements allow a company to use a law firm’s address for official paperwork and to store its incorporation records there.

StarMetro’s search for Xiemen is intended to shed light on a scandal spanning multiple countries and engulfing several powerful political figures.

On April 2, 2017, Xiemen invoiced United Arab Emirates adviser George Nader for C$3.3 million, requesting a first instalment of C$1.3 million be transferred through a Vancouver CIBC branch. Five days later, Broidy, deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee, invoiced Xiemen for the first instalment amount, minus C$67,000.

CIBC, which took part in the transfer according to AP’s documents, declined StarMetro’s interview requests.

The Canadian agency that regulates international money transfers, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (Fintrac), requires Canadian banks and accountants to report to it any single transaction larger than $10,000. The agency was unavailable for an interview. Spokesperson Jamela Austria told StarMetro it is prohibited by Canadian law “from speaking to information it may have received or financial intelligence that it may have disclosed.”

There is no evidence any laws were broken in the April 2017 payment.

“Good morning dear Elliott,” Nader wrote in an email released by AP. “Send me kindly an invoice for the amount of $2.5 million US Dollars to my company GS Investment Ltd. for consultancy, marketing and other related services.”

Nader is a Lebanese-American businessman convicted in 2003 on 10 counts of sexually abusing minors. Sources in an AP investigation alleged Nader paid Broidy to persuade Trump to oppose Qatar in its ongoing feud with the United Arab Emirates.

Broidy’s lawyer is Michael Cohen, who testified in court he has only two other clients: President Donald Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity. Cohen is currently under criminal investigation in a high-profile probe of alleged foreign interference in the U.S. election, which prompted an FBI raid of his office in April.

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Another lawyer for Broidy, Chris Clark, told AP its investigation “is based on fraudulent and fabricated documents obtained from entities with a known agenda to harm Mr. Broidy.”

Broidy resigned from the Republican National Committee last month after admitting he paid C$2 million to a Playboy model he said he’d gotten pregnant, resulting in an abortion. In 2009, Broidy pleaded guilty to bribing New York state pension officials with $1 million in illegal gifts.

The only other reference StarMetro could find to Xiemen is a 2017 Nevada court ruling, in which a judge declared that a Las Vegas property developer, SFR Investments, is “wholly owned by a Canadian Entity, Xiemen … with its principal place of business in Canada and an individual named John Gibson who is a citizen and resident of South Africa.”

—With files from The Associated Press

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