Owners of former Trump hotel in Panama say president’s firm evaded taxes
By David A. Fahrenthold June 3 at 10:47 PM
The majority owners of the former Trump Panama hotel — who last year removed President Trump’s name and cut ties with his company — say they’ve discovered old financial records showing that the Trump Organization was evading Panamanian taxes, according to a new legal filing.
That filing was made Monday in federal court in New York by Orestes Fintiklis, a Cypriot investor whose company is the majority owner of the building that once housed the Trump Ocean Club in Panama City. In March 2018, Fintiklis sought to fire the Trump Organization as the hotel’s manager — setting off an odd 10-day standoff that included visits from the police, shoving matches between Fintiklis’s staffers and Trump loyalists, and occasional piano concerts by Fintiklis in the lobby. Eventually, a Panamanian judge gave him control.
Now, the hotel is a Marriott. But Trump’s company and Fintiklis are still suing each other for millions in damages, with each accusing the other of breaching their prior agreements.
In Monday’s filing, Fintiklis says he was able to examine the hotel’s books after ejecting Trump employees, and those books showed that the Trump Organization was not paying Panama the required 12.5 percent tax on the management fees it collected to run the hotel. Fintiklis said Trump’s company also avoided taxes by underreporting the salaries it paid to hotel employees.
In the filing, Fintiklis does not give a dollar figure for the amount of taxes Trump allegedly evaded. But he says his company could now face “millions of dollars in liability” if Panama demands that it pay the taxes Trump did not. Fintiklis also asserts that the Panamanian authorities have audited the hotel’s books and “identified the failure to withhold and pay income taxes relating to Trump’s management fees.” But the filing offers no proof of a Panamanian government audit. The Washington Post was not able to reach tax authorities in Panama on Monday evening.
“Had Trump been honest . . . about its failure to pay taxes on the management fees it earned and its failure to properly report employee salaries to Panama’s social security agency,” Fintiklis says, his company would not have purchased his share of the hotel in 2017.
Trump’s company on Monday denied any wrongdoing.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/owners-of-former-trump-hotel-in-panama-say-presidents-firm-evaded-taxes/2019/06/03/fe70d344-866b-11e9-a870-b9c411dc4312_story.html?utm_term=.376159a4bb56
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