A mysterious company spent more than $3 million last year on buying condos from Donald Trump

Because the president has not divested himself from his business empire, this is a serious conflict of interest

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published April 21, 2017 2:33PM (EDT)

 (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

While President Donald Trump's conflicts of interest may be legal, that doesn't mean they're ethical — and a new report by USA Today sheds light on exactly why his conflicts could create some very big problems in the future.

A Las Vegas financial firm known as Milan Investment Limited was founded only weeks before the Republican National Convention and purchased $3.1 million in condos co-owned by Donald Trump in the Las Vegas strip over the next four months, according to a report by USA Today. A subsequent investigation by the publication was unable to determine the address of the company, and little is known about the three names they were able to definitely tie to it — Jun Xu, Qi Huang, and Chen Huang. Donald Trump's son Eric signed the deeds on behalf of the sellers.

Although the president is exempt from the same conflict of interest rules that apply to other elected officials, if he were not, this type of murky transaction would most likely be illegal.

Trump currently owns more than 400 condo units and home lots — with the ones in the United States containing a value of at least $250 million — that could be sold for his personal profit, according to the same USA Today report. The individual value of the properties ranges from $200,000 to $35 million. Because these are properties owned by his companies rather than ones that merely brandish his name due to licensing arrangements, their sales directly enrich the president himself. Since the start of his 2016 presidential campaign, there have been confirmed sales for at least 58 real estate units owned by at least one of Trump's companies for a total of roughly $90 million.

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By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Conflicts Of Interest Donald Trump Las Vegas