![]() “During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises. If the transaction seemed suspicious-multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money-there may have been a reason. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin. ![]() The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. But Bogatin wasn’t deterred by the limited availability or the sky-high prices. From the day it opened, the building was a hit-all but a few dozen of its 263 units had sold in the first few months. Donald Trump was just coming into his own as a serious player in Manhattan real estate, and Trump Tower was the crown jewel of his growing empire. Its brash, 38-year-old developer was something of a tabloid celebrity himself. ![]() Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58-story edifice with gold-plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.Ī monument to celebrity and conspicuous consumption, the tower was home to the likes of Johnny Carson, Steven Spielberg, and Sophia Loren. Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army-his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam-he had clearly done quite well for himself. The 38-year-old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City. ![]()
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