16/06/17 13:24
In Feb 2017, Wilbur Ross an American investor worth 2.9 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, was confirmed by the Senate to be the Trump administration’s Secretary of Commerce. He is the richest of Trump’s cabinet members. Ross made his fortune in Blue Collar Industries. He specialized in investing in distressed businesses. He focused on sectors like coal, textiles, telecommunications, steel and foreign banks. As U.S. Secretary of Commerce he is leading trade policy and business development for the administration. Trump said of Ross, “I put on a killer”.
Ross has an undergraduate degree from Yale and a Harvard M.B.A. He worked for 24 years at Rothchild Inc. as a bankruptcy specialist. It was there that he first encountered Donald Trump. He and Carl Icahn saved Donald Trump from personal bankruptcy when Trump was unable to pay his bondholders in the now failed Trump Casinos in Atlantic City. At the time, Wilbur Ross represented a group of Rothschild investors in Trump Casinos and Icahn was Trump’s largest bondholder.
During the financial crisis of 2008, Wilbur Ross invested in several distressed banks in England, Greece and one of great interest, The Bank of Cypress. Ross invested 400 million euros in a Cypriot bank widely known as a tax haven for Russian oligarchs. Shortly after his investment, he was named Vice Chairman of the bank. A position he shared with Putin ally and ex-KGB man Vladimire Stshalakovsky.
In 2014, the U.S. State Department, identified The Bank of Cyprus as a “primary concern” as a possible mechanism for Russians to evade sanctions imposed on them for invading Crimea. In essence, it may have been a Russian money laundering operation. Recently, Josef Ackerman was named the CEO of the Bank of Cyprus by Wilber Ross and Vladimir Stshalakovsky. Ackerman left Deutche Bank in 2012 after serving as CEO of Deutche Bank . in Jan 2017, the German bank was fined $630 million in a $10 Billion Russian money laundering scheme by the U.S. Department of Justice. Deutshe Bank is one of the few banks that would lend money to Donald Trump.
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