THE financing of Donald Trump’s Scottish golf courses formed part on an investigation into the tycoon’s connections with Russia, it has been revealed.
Details of the investigation by Fusion GPS – the intelligence company which last year caused a storm in Washington with a dossier of links between the Republican’s campaign to be president and the Kremlin – were leaked earlier this week by a US senator.
Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion, was interviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee last August over that dossier, which most famously contained a claim that the Kremlin had compromising video footage of the now President watching prostitutes engage in a sordid sex act.
The research – compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele – has been rubbished by Trump, but the transcript of the interview suggests it was being taken seriously by US intelligence agencies.
In his 10-hour interview with the Senate committee, Simpson said that the firm’s research into Trump’s past began as “a kind of holistic examination” of his business record.
Simpson said the Scottish golf courses in Turnberry and Aberdeenshire came under scrutiny as the investigation wanted to examine the finances behind them.
He said: “The original inquiry was into the value of the courses, whether he had to borrow money to buy them, whether they were encumbered with debt, how much money they brought in, what valuations he put on them, and property tax filings.”
Simpson added: “He sunk a lot of money into them and he hadn’t gotten a lot of money back yet.”
The latest financial filings show Trump International and Trump Turnberry lost £19 million between them in 2016, with a £9.5m loss the year before.
The Trump Organisation did not comment.
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