Former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was asked to surrender himself to U.S. authorities early this morning and was served with a 30-plus page indictment detailing extensive money laundering and potential foreign collusion. The document contains numerous allegations against Manafort, including one small but interesting tidbit about a rental property in Manhattan.
In 2012, says the indictment, Manafort bought a condo in SoHo for $2.8 million via a corporate shell called “MC Soho Holdings, LLC.” “All the money used to purchase the condominium came from [Manafort] entities in Cyprus,” the document goes on. The former campaign head allegedly used this building as a money-making venture, “charging thousands of dollars a week on Airbnb, among other places.” Yet Manafort told the bank specifically that the property was owner-occupied in order to get a bigger loan.
This is exactly the kind of behavior Airbnb has spent years trying to crack down on–people buying up properties to permanently rent out. While this vignette is the least of Manafort’s worries, Airbnb will surely take notice.
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