likely get you put in jail here in the U.S.
begin quote from:
PUNE,
India — It is a daunting proposition to put $2 million apartments on
the market in Pune — a quiet industrial city in the west of India, where
even the fanciest neighborhoods are lined with squat housing blocks.
But the …
PUNE,
India — It is a daunting proposition to put $2 million apartments on
the market in Pune — a quiet industrial city in the west of India, where
even the fanciest neighborhoods are lined with squat housing blocks.
But the developers of Trump Towers Pune,
an elegant pair of 23-story black-glass pillars, have an extraordinary
new marketing tool they are moving quickly to exploit: the
president-elect of the United States.
Since Donald J. Trump won the presidency, they have celebrated the growth that Mr. Trump’s win could bring to their brand, even flying to New York last week to meet with the president-elect and his family as he was assembling his cabinet.
“We
will see a tremendous jump in valuation in terms of the second tower,”
said Pranav R. Bhakta, a consultant who helped Mr. Trump’s organization
make inroads into the Indian market five years ago. “To say, ‘I have a
Trump flat or residence’ — it’s president-elect branded. It’s that
recall value. If they didn’t know Trump before, they definitely know him
now.”
In
just under nine weeks, Mr. Trump will take control of a portfolio of
public business between the United States and India, the world’s two
largest democracies, supervising debates over issues including climate
change, maritime shadowboxing with China and the nuclear standoff with
Pakistan.
Continue reading the main story
The
meeting shows that Mr. Trump has not fully disengaged from his business
ventures even as he leads his presidential transition, and it
highlights the potential conflicts he will face going forward if he does
not separate himself from a brand that has been constructed around his
persona.
In
a telephone interview, Atul Chordia, one of the developers who met last
week with Mr. Trump, played down the appointment as a “two-minute”
congratulatory conversation in which no business was transacted and no
new projects were discussed.
But newspapers in India reported it as a business meeting, illustrated with a photograph of the beaming real estate executives — Atul Chordia, Sagar Chordia and Kalpesh Mehta
— flanking the future president, and indicated that the builders and
Mr. Trump’s organization are planning further collaborative real estate
projects.
Sagar
Chordia confirmed to The New York Times on Sundaythat this account of
the meeting in New York — which included discussions with the Trump
family about possible additional real estate deals — was accurate. A
spokeswoman for the Trump Organization did not dispute this account —
saying only that the encounter with Mr. Trump himself was brief.
“We have identified a piece of land and spoken to them,” Sagar Chordia told The Business Standard,
a daily newspaper in India. Sagar Chordia, who posted photos of himself
wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat on social media during the
presidential campaign, did not respond to repeated requests for comment
from The Times.
Three
prominent ethics lawyers said in interviews on Sunday that the
interaction between Mr. Trump and his business partners from India does
not appear to violate federal laws or ethics rules, nor would it even if
he had already been sworn in. This is in part because the president,
unlike members of Congress and most other federal employees, is exempt
from such requirements.
But
each lawyer agreed the activities created the appearance that Mr. Trump
and his business partners are using his status as a way to profit.
“It
is unprecedented in modern history,” said Andrew D. Herman, a lawyer
who has represented more than a dozen members of Congress in ethics
cases. “But this is the new normal.”
Robert
S. Stern, a lawyer who helped write California’s ethics law and the
former president of the nonprofit Center for Governmental Studies, said
that anytime Mr. Trump has a meeting with a foreign government leader
where one of his projects is based — a list
that includes Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, Canada,
Panama, Dubai, the Philippines, South Korea and Uruguay — questions may
arise as to whether he took any action that might benefit his
investments.
“It
already looks like he is using his position as president-elect to
promote something in India that would benefit him financially,” Mr.
Stern said. “It is not presidential — or at least presidential before
him.”
Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s transition team, declined on Sunday to comment.
A
spokeswoman from the Trump Organization declined to address questions
about the appropriateness of Mr. Trump meeting with his business
partners, and instead pointed to a statement the organization made last
week about shifting control of Mr. Trump’s business operations to his
children.
“This
is a top priority at the organization, and the structure that is
ultimately selected will comply with all applicable rules and
regulations,” said Amanda Miller, the vice president of marketing at the
Trump Organization.
The Pune towers are the first Trump-branded project to be completed in India, to be followed in the next few years by a 75-story skyscraper in Mumbai.
Mr.
Trump’s five current projects in India are worth around $1.5 billion,
making it Mr. Trump’s most active development market outside North
America, Mr. Mehta, the managing director at Tribeca Developers and the
Trump Organization’s representative in India, told The Indian Express last week.
In
most cases, Mr. Trump does not invest in the projects, but instead
allows the developers to use his name in return for an undisclosed sum
in royalties, according to industry analysts. Though each agreement is
structured differently, in many cases the brand receives a percentage of
sales, meaning Mr. Trump stands to benefit directly from increased
revenues.
Publicity
materials focus heavily on Mr. Trump and his family. One pitch promises
that “the experience of owning a Trump-branded property and living the
Trump lifestyle is unparalleled.” Customers requesting information about
the units receive an email illustrated with a large photograph of
Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s elder daughter, seated thoughtfully before a
window.
The Trump name, Sagar Chordia told The Business Standard, is so valuable that apartments in the towers sell for 35 percent
more than comparable apartments in other developments. Similar projects
have been undertaken by Armani, the Four Seasons and the Ritz Carlton,
said Ramesh Nair, chief operating officer and international director at
Jones Lang LaSalle Property Consultants, a global real estate company.
“It’s
a branding project,” Mr. Nair said. “There is no skin in the game. You
are lending your name. You give some specifications for the project. And
you will generate some free publicity.”
But
sharing your brand name with Indian developers could backfire. Over the
past decade, many unscrupulous developers here allowed projects to
stall midway for lack of ready capital and used home buyers’ deposits to
begin work on the next project, leaving families stripped of their
savings to protest helplessly.
Mr.
Nair said Mr. Trump so far had partnered with well-regarded firms, but
warned that a poor choice could damage not only Mr. Trump’s reputation,
but that of the United States, given the corruption typical of Indian
land deals.
“If
that small university can get him into trouble, you can imagine what
could happen with India’s ‘squeaky-clean’ real estate sector,” Mr. Nair
said, referring to the fraud lawsuit against Trump University, which Mr.
Trump settled
last week for $25 million. “Tomorrow they could have 100 buyers
standing outside the U.S. Consulate, saying, ‘Give me back my money.’”
Industry
observers differed on whether Mr. Trump’s brand image would help
increase real estate sales. India’s luxury housing market has been weak
for years, and has been further damaged by a new government drive to
stamp out untaxed cash transactions.
So far, some boldface names have reportedly purchased units at the Trump Towers Pune, including the Bollywood actors Rishi Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor.
The
Chordia family, which has close ties to Sharad Pawar, the chief of
India’s Nationalist Congress Party, is particularly enthusiastic in its
embrace of Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump has made targeted appeals to Indian-Americans for financial support, holding a major fund-raising event in October in Edison, N.J., a city with a large number of Indian residents, where Mr. Trump called himself “a big fan of Hindu.”
On
the morning of the election, Sagar Chordia described giving a party for
800 people in honor of Mr. Trump’s first visit there, in 2014. Vijayta
Lalwani, a local journalist who interviewed Sagar Chordia as the final
results came in, described him as “ecstatic.”
Mr.
Bhakta, the former consultant to Trump’s development group, said he was
confident that more collaborations were forthcoming. He said Mr.
Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. has typically taken the lead on advancing
deals in India, but that the president-elect also spends ample time with
Indian partners.
“Every
time I have been there with clients from India, we always have a
heart-to-heart with Senior,” he said. “He is very much passionate about
the India story.”
Many
in Pune said they believed demand for the apartments would rise. Mohan
Devasi, 21, a laborer, said he had been impressed by Mr. Trump when he
“caught a glimpse of him” in Pune in 2014. He had heard Mr. Trump was “a
close friend of Narendra Modi” and that he had promised to take a hard
line on Muslims.
“He
is right now the American president, which means he is the most
powerful person in the world,” said Partha Sikder, 25. “He’ll have that
liberty. People will obviously want the apartments more.”
Mr.
Trump’s real estate partners are also taking steps to keep the focus on
the president-elect. Sagar Chordia told reporters from The Indian Express that he is planning to attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January.
Correction: November 20, 2016
An earlier version of this article misstated when Sagar Chordia confirmed to The New York Times the account of the meeting in New York. It was on Sunday, not Saturday.
An earlier version of this article misstated when Sagar Chordia confirmed to The New York Times the account of the meeting in New York. It was on Sunday, not Saturday.
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