From: Richard Kahn | Ts |
Sent: 4/27/2018 8:25:30 PM To: jeffrey E. [jeevacation@gmail.com] Subject: Will Cohen Cooperate? Tenuous Finances May Provide Crucial Clues
Importance: — High
shockingly it appears he has some money in real estate deals...
will cohen Cooperate? Tenuous Finances May Provide Crucial Clues 2018-04-27 08:00:00.2 GMT
By Shahien Nasiripour and Caleb Melby (Bloomberg) -- In the two weeks since federal agents seized
the files of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal
attorney and fixer, a question has hovered: will Cohen cooperate with investigators?
His decision could depend in part on whether he can readily shoulder the enormous legal fees required to fight a federal probe of this magnitude.
At first blush, Cohen looks like a pretty rich man. He drives a white Rolls Royce, sports a $50,000 watch and owns a fair amount of Manhattan real estate.
But just as his loyalty to Trump is coming under scrutiny,
a more tenuous financial picture is emerging. A taxi business he and his wife built is deeply in debt and losing money daily, his commercial real estate is throwing off only modest income, and his legal and consulting work is on hold while he remains under investigation.
cohen declined repeated requests to comment.
The owners of 32 New York City taxi licenses -- known as medallions -- he and his wife, Laura, took out at least 16 loans based on their once-soaring value, liens show. with the rise of Uber and Lyft, the price of a medallion has fallen from more than $1 million to around $163,000 in the past four years. Income from the taxi business has plummeted, and millions of
dollars of the Cohens’ loans went under water. Their bank said
in a November public filing that it had loans out to three taxi borrowers, and all were at high risk of default.
Suspended Medallions
Unpaid taxes and fines have piled up at the Cohen taxi companies, triggering a suspension of about half of the medallions, city records show, squeezing cash flow.
whatever monthly income the cabs once produced almost certainly fell well short of the debt payments owed to Sterling National Bank, their Montebello, New York-based lender. Sterling has foreclosed on operators in similar situations and sued them but appears to be taking a less-confrontational approach with the Cohens. On Tuesday, the bank agreed to new loans for their companies and to Cohen personally, public filings show. Sterling declined to comment.
The taxi business isn’t the only part of Cohen's empire that’s suffering. The law firm Squire Patton Boggs said it ended
its "strategic alliance” with Cohen after law enforcement raided his offices, and the rest of his legal work could decline for
the same reason. Cohen, 51, makes others’ ugly problems
disappear, a practice that was previously lucrative. Essential Consultants LLC, a company affiliated with Cohen, was paid $250,000 after he negotiated a $1.6 million payment to a former Playboy model on behalf of Republican National Committee official Elliott Broidy, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
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