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If the payments were licensed, it may have been legally difficult for the Trump Organization to evict the bank. However, some Iranian organizations were granted licenses exempting specific transactions from sanctions. had a sweeping embargo in place which prohibited Americans from doing business with Iran, including receiving rent payments. The legal ramifications of the Trump Organization taking rent payments from Bank Melli are unclear.Īt the time, the U.S. (Seth Wenig/AP)Ī court document obtained by ICIJ indicates that Bank Melli’s rent on more than 8,000 square feet on the GM Building’s 44th floor may have topped half a million dollars a year. Donald Trump’s real estate organization rented office space in the building to Bank Melli from 1998 to 2003. The General Motors Building in midtown Manhattan in 2008. “It suggests that his principles are pretty flexible when it comes to him getting paid.” State Department and spent nearly a decade working on Iran sanctions in the administrations of George W. “It’s a pretty hypocritical position to take,” said Richard Nephew, who served from 2013 to 2015 as principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy at the U.S. His five-year stint as Bank Melli’s landlord provides an example of the Trump Organization itself doing business with a government hostile to the United States. Trump has denounced Iran as a “big enemy,” blasted Hillary Clinton for not taking a harder line against the Iranian regime and charged that donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation amounted to evidence of corruption. The Trump Organization’s dealings with the Iranian bank shed more light on Trump’s wide-ranging business interests, which sometimes stand at odds with his blunt declarations on the campaign trail. authorities also alleged that the bank had been used between 20 to funnel money to a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that has sponsored terrorist attacks - a period that overlapped with the time the bank rented office space from Trump. officials later alleged that Bank Melli had been used to obtain sensitive materials for Iran’s nuclear program. Treasury Department designated Bank Melli in 1999 as being controlled by the Iranian government. The Trump Organization kept the bank on as a tenant for four more years after the U.S. Trump inherited Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-controlled banks, as a tenant when he purchased the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, according to public records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Center for Public Integrity. authorities have linked to terrorist groups and Iran’s nuclear program. Donald Trump’s real estate organization rented New York office space from 1998 to 2003 to an Iranian bank that U.S.

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