Aras Agalarov, a developer with ties to the Trump family and the supposed source of Russian government dirt on Hillary Clinton in the infamous Donald Trump Jr. meeting, sold an apartment in a Midtown condo tower ensnared in a Kazakh corruption case as his name started popping up in news reports.
“There is absolutely no connection between selling these two properties to anything in the news,” an attorney representing the Agalarovs told the New York Daily News. “I can assure you that Mr. Agalarov knows a lot more about real estate investment than you or I do,” he said.
Property records shows that Agalarov’s wife, Irina Agalarova, sold a two-bedroom apartment at 135 West 52nd Street for $2.8 million in late June, $300,000 more than what she paid for it in February 2016.
The Agalarovs worked with Trump to bring his Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013 and also talked about building a Trump Tower in the Russian capital.
In June 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Clinton, which Aras Agalarov had supposedly obtained from Russian government sources.
Two Kazakh investors allegedly invested in the Chetrit Group’s Flatotel condo conversion to launder money, according to a 2016 lawsuit. [NYP] — Konrad Putzier