a -- his associates were living in Trump Tower, and he was running a high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower, while he himself was a fugitive for having rigged the skating competition at the Salt Lake Olympics and a bunch of other sporting events engaged in rigging.
And when Mr. Trump went to the Miss Universe pageant in 2013, Taiwanchik was there in the VIP section with Mr. Trump and lots of other Kremlin biggies. So that kind of thing raised questions with us.
Generally speaking, the patterns of activity that we thought might be suggestive of money laundering were, you know, fast turnover deals and deals where there seemed to have been efforts to disguise the identity of the buyer.
MR. SCHIFF: And during what time period did you see indications of fast turnover transactions or transactions made in the name of people who were not the actual purchasers?
MR. SIMPSON: Well, I mean, there were sort of periods -- what we saw was that beginning in the early 2000s, when he began to do business with Bayrock and to do some of these other deals, that these were the problematic deals that he entered into. So it was essentially the previous decade of business deals, 2005 onward.
MR. SCHIFF: And up until what point? Do you recall? Or continuing to the present?
MR. SIMPSON: Well, I mean, some of the things that we have -- that we looked at that we thought were very concerning are existing investments in projects, and specifically a project in Panama, the one in Toronto. Those both got a lot of fraud associated with them, a lot of fraud allegations, a lot of activity that I would say smacks of fraud, and a lot of Russian mafia figures listed as buyers who
UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
