NEW YORK _ President Donald Trump's name has for the first time been discovered in the Panama Papers, the massive trove of leaked documents detailing the ways in which the world's richest people hide their business dealings from scrutiny and taxation.
The discovery, first flagged by investigative reporter Jake Bernstein on Friday afternoon, involves the purchase and subsequent sale of a condo at the newly constructed Trump Palace on the Upper East Side in the early 1990s.
The deal involved a mysterious Panamanian company called Process Consultants, Inc., which bought a 16th floor condo at the Trump skyscraper in 1991.
Process Consultants was owned through so-called bearer shares, which can be used to transfer assets with complete anonymity. Such shares are popular among money launderers.
Three years after the purchase, Process Consultants put the Trump Palace unit up for sale, with the Trump Corporation as its exclusive broker. A woman from Hong Kong, whose name has appeared in other leaked documents, appears to have bought the apartment for $355,000, according to a contract.
As has been the case with most Panama Papers revelations, there's no indication of who is actually behind Process Consultants or where that person's money came from.
While using bearer shares doesn't prove that Process Consultants was involved in something dubious, the quick condo flip is characteristic of money laundering.
Trump himself could be in serious trouble if his company knowingly facilitated the condo sale for the purpose of laundering money.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment from The New York Daily News.
As part of his investigation into Russian election meddling, special prosecutor Robert Mueller has been looking into Trump's sprawling real estate empire, according to reports. It's not known if the Process Consultants deal has been of interest in that probe.
The Trump condo contract is one of hundreds of thousands of documents that were leaked in 2015 from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sold anonymous shell companies around the globe. Some of the world's richest people were able to conduct shady business deals by hiding behind the law firm's offshore companies.
After the massive leak, the founders behind Mossack Fonseca were arrested and the firm remains under investigation around the world.
Last month, another leaked trove of documents dubbed the Paradise Papers revealed that Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has been doing million-dollar business deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin's son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov.
