Scottish Lawmakers Decline Call to Investigate Finances of Trump’s Golf Courses

Former US president Donald Trump owns 15 golf courses across the US, Scotland and Ireland. A September investigation into Trump’s tax returns found that Trump has lost around $315 million since 2000 from the 14 golf courses he owns.
Sputnik

Scottish lawmakers have called on the government to launch an investigation into Trump and the Trump Organization to determine how he received the funds to buy two golf courses in Scotland, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Trump has reportedly invested more than $289 million into the two golf courses in the country without ever turning a profit.

Scottish lawmakers called for an “unexplained wealth order” to determine where Trump got the money to buy the golf courses. If the Trump Organization is unable to prove that the money used to buy the courses is clean, the Scottish government could in turn confiscate the properties.

However, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that investigations regarding Trump’s finances would be left to the police.

On Wednesday, Scotland's Parliament agreed with Sturgeon, rejecting a nonbinding measure that called on Sturgeon to launch an investigation into Trump’s finances.

However, the leader of Scotland's Green Party, Patrick Harvie, criticized the Parliament’s decision, having called for a governmental investigation “to protect Scotland's good name from association with the toxic Trump brand."

"Unfortunately, today's debate confirmed the Scottish Government remains unwilling to investigation Trump's golf courses," Harvie said in statement following the vote, CBS News reported. "Scotland cannot be a country where anyone with money can buy whatever land and property they want, no questions asked."

In a recent statement, Trump’s son, Eric, censured politicians for launching such an investigation.

“At a critical time when politicians should be focused on saving lives and reopening businesses in Scotland, they are focused on advancing their personal agendas," Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said in a statement obtained by the Hill.

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