SANDS POINT, N.Y. _ Two former associates of Donald Trump helped a family of wealthy Kazakh fugitives make extensive investments in the United States, some aimed at helping family members obtain legal residency here, a McClatchy investigation shows.
Felix Sater, an ex-con and onetime senior adviser in the Trump Organization, helped the Trump family scout deals in Russia. He led an effort that began in 2012 to assist the stepchildren of Viktor Khrapunov, who that year had been placed on an international detention request list by the global police agency Interpol.
Khrapunov is the former Kazakh energy minister and ex-mayor of Almaty, that nation's most populous city. He fled to Switzerland a decade ago, after Kazakhstan's leaders accused him and his wife of stealing government funds. They are now accused in civil lawsuits of laundering money through luxury properties, including Trump-branded condos in the Soho neighborhood of New York.
McClatchy's probe reveals that with the help of Sater and his then-business associate Daniel Ridloff, also formerly affiliated with the Trump Organization, the Khrapunov family invested millions in a short-lived company that sought to place biometrics machines in airports across the country.
The real aim of Khrapunov's investment was obtaining U.S. residency for at least one member of the family; the company submitted, with the help of the onetime Trump associates, at least three requests to obtain visas for foreign workers.
The McClatchy investigation reveals a deeper relationship than previously known between the former Trump Organization figures and the fugitive Khrapunovs _ underscoring how little is known about many of those involved with the Trump Organization.
There is no evidence that Trump himself participated in the courting of the Khrapunovs, but the affair sheds light on the often murky activities of the associates with whom he did deals at home and abroad.
