#did Carlos ask Charles for the keys so he could show the car to his dad

[alexturntable]

horsepower_hunters Carlos Sainz Snr and Jnr revving Charles Leclerc’s Daytona this evening in Monaco 🔥

[amirasainz]

I’m obsessed with this blog so much!!!

What about amira was bored and decided to bake the grid baked good, save to say they are more in love or adore her more

OK.. sooo.... the Pierre and Kika part turned kind of smutty (I loved writing it). I hope you enjoy reading and let me know if you have any requests.

-XoXo

I like you, have a cupcake🧁

It truly was a scene out of a fairytale. Amira, dressed in a beautiful green gown with matching makeup, carried a basket brimming with Ferrari cupcakes. Little did most people know that her true passion lay in baking.

With an exuberant grin, she entered the paddock and spotted Lewis and Fernando. Skipping over to them, she called out, “Lew-Lew, Nando. Guess what?” The two men exchanged grins, eagerly asking, “What?” Amira proudly presented her cupcakes: one adorned with a tiny racing helmet for Nando and another shaped like a car for Lewis. Their awe was palpable as they stared at her creations. “Go on, try them,” she urged, nervously playing with her hair.

After the first bite, the two world champions showered her with praise. With kisses on their cheeks, Amira sought out her other friends. Max, Key, and little P were next. P, with her innocent curiosity, asked, “Aunty Ami, what’s in your basket?” Amira replied, maintaining a serious tone, “Well, my lovely gato, this magical basket holds cupcakes for you, your Mama, and your Papa.”

Kelly and Max, overhearing the sweet exchange, approached. Max hugged Amira tightly, while Kelly planted a brief kiss on her forehead. As she distributed the cupcakes, they all savored the magical treats. Max leaned down to Penelope’s height and whispered, “At least one of your Mamas can bake.” making him share a meaningful glance with Kelly.

After a sweet goodbye and a promise for dinner this weekend Amira ran to Kika and Pierre. Before she could run too far, a pair of strong arms picked her up from the ground. She immediately realised who it was. "Pierre, let me down" she laughed. Kika and Pierre were giggling with her, immediately crowding her against the wall. The two of them really had no limit. After sharing two kisses with Kika and Pierre on the lips, because according to them this is how close friends greeted each other in France and Portugal, she told them a bit breathless about her creation. "Oh Babygirl, you are truly an angel" whispered Pierre in her ear while Kika slowly kissed her neck. Pierre took a bit of the cupcake cream, smeared it on Amiras lips and kissed it off of them. "Mmmmhhh, amazing" he whispered. He held the cupcakes up for Kika, who did the exact same thing. While Kika was cleaning Amira from any excess creme (kissing her breathless) Pierre brushed his hands over her body and kissed her temple.

Before the situation could escalate anymore, the little group got interrupted from Pierre team principal. "You know, babgirl. If you come over to us tonight, Pierre and I can show you the real way to use whipped cream in the bed" Kika said to her with a predatory glint in her eyes. "The real way?" asked Amira naively. "Ohh amour, we have a lot of learning to do."

Amira, having settled down from her playful escapade with Pierre and Kika, continued distributing cupcakes. As she encountered George, Alex, Lily, and Carmen, she offered each of them a sweet treat along with a warm hug, saying, “One for you.” Lily couldn’t help but exclaim, “This girl is too good for this world,” a sentiment echoed by the other three.

Amira followed the same approach when giving Oscar and Lando their cupcakes. However, the two papaya drivers weren’t willing to let her go so easily. They convinced her to play a round of Monopoly, which was really just an excuse to keep her company.

As for Carlos and Charles, after the race, they discovered picture-perfect cupcakes waiting in their drivers’ room. Attached were two heartfelt notes. If the two of them shed a few tears after reading Amira’s encouraging messages, well, that was their little secret.

[adventuringblind]

Mr. Blue Sky

Charles Leclerc x Reader x Max Verstappen

Genre: Fluff

Request: Yes, I loved every second of this. Y'all are welcome to send me your own ideas :)

Summary: After Max gets cheated on, he can't stand being in the house where it happened. Reader and Charles take him in and show him he's still loved.

Warnings: cheating

Notes: No hate to Kelly. I just needed this as a plot point.

Fun fact: my mom calls Valentine’s Day ‘legislative love day’ and will only do any remotely related activities on the 15th because she has a point to prove.

Masterlist

The sound of Charles' phone buzzing at an ungodly hour is what you woke up to. The room is still pitch black, and you can hardly make out Charles in the bed.

He rolls over and pucks up the phone. "It's Max." He states. Voice filled with the sleep from which he was dragged.

He answers the phone, and you curl up into him, hoping to listen in. "Max? Are you-"

You can hear faint mumbling and the occasional choked sob on the other end of the line. "Breathe, Max. I'm going to come get you. Can you stay on the phone with me?" Charles is throwing off the covers and looking for his car keys.

You look at Charles for some sort of answer. To which Charles pulls the phone away from his ear and kisses your head. "Kelly cheated. I'm going to go get him."

You nod your head in understanding. You clamber out of bed and see Charles off to the door.

Your grateful that Monte Carlo is a small city and that it doesn’t take long for him to come back. His body shouldering a drunk Max through the door.

Max is no coherent and reeks of alcohol. His eyes are puffy and his cheeks tear stained. His lips tremble as them mutter words neither of you can understand.

Your heart hearts for him. You and Charles had made an effort to be around the Dutch. You both actively became friends with him and found yourselves in each others company often.

And did you both end up falling for the same pair of blue eyes? Yes.

It was actually Charles who brought it up first. You’d never considered the idea of being with more then one person. Then you got to know Max and you found yourself considering more often then you’d admit.

Neither of you knew if Max would ever be into that and neither of you wanted to ask. The possibility of ruining what is currently a good friendship was not on the to-do list. Plus, he had Kelly and P.

You shake of your thoughts and help Charles get Max into the guest bed. You and him do your best at cleaning him up and making him comfortable despite the fact he is less then cooperative.

When you two are finally back in your own bed, Charles sighs in pained defeat. “She cheated on him while he was out with P.”

You cringe in disgust. “Has it been going on long?”

“Apparently so. About four months.” Charles climbs further into the blankets and pulls you into his chest. “He gave her the apartment. He was out late because he didn’t know where to go.”

“We could offer him a place here for the time being.” You suggest. The slightest hint of a smirk playing on your lips.

“Pretty sure you are just wanting to see more of him.” He chuckles. “But yes, I think it’s a good offer until he figures things out.”

“Don’t lie, you stare at him all the time! You’re going to be the one who outs us.”

“Shush amour. I’m exhausted and I know you are also. Now sleep.”

~

The week brings interesting events. Max does take the offer to move in, though he’s been quiet and reserved since he started staying with you. Max, Charles, and Lando went back to, now Kelly’s apartment, to get his stuff.

He comes back into the house crying. His heart shattered and the apartment a mere reminder of the events that occurred.

Your grateful it’s the off season and Max will hopefully have some time to process before the start of the new season. You and Charles don’t push him and give him space when he needs. Though you also invade when you can see he’s spiraling. Desperate attempts at not letting him go into those dark places are often just you being in the same room as him.

~

By the time Christmas rolls around, he’s doing the slightest bit better. He’s been out of the room more and you haven’t had to force him to eat. He decorates the apartment with you and Charles.

It’s disastrous.

The three of you can’t stop laughing at the mess you’ve made of the decor.

The three of you spend Christmas Eve with Charles’ family. Max hadn’t wanted to go home to his less then festive father and Victoria was away with her in-laws.

You obviously weren’t going to leave him alone and Pascale had been thrilled when he said he’d come to dinner.

You could tell he felt awkward and out of place at first, but everyone did their best to make him feel welcome. Soon he was relaxing, sipping on his drink and engaging in conversation.

~

Christmas and new years had gone by to fast. January had now descended and the cold weather had yet to completely let up.

Originally you thought Max would be out by now. That he’d want his own space as soon as possible. It’s not like he couldn’t afford it. Yet he stayed and you and Charles welcomed him in.

Max was seemed like he was healing. His eyes had regained their light. The one they lost those first days of December. He definitely hadn’t moved one though. You and Charles could still hear the soft sniffles from his room at night.

He may be smiling, but he’s still broken hearted.

The most interesting new additions are the cats. The felines that are Max’s children. He would probably murder for his cats and become the next John Wick. There is something wholesome and sweet about his interactions with his pets.

Charles on the other hand has a bad relationship with animals in general. Small felines included. He like them, they just don’t like him back yet. Max has been letting him feed them until they realize he is nice.

You also have learned that you can share meal prep with Max. You’d banned Charles from it after he tried once and failed miserably. Max isn’t the best in the kitchen, but he helps out and cooks some nights.

~

February. The month of love.

Everything around reminds Max of what happened. How he will not be doing anything special for the holiday. He doesn’t even want to go out of the apartment and you and Charles have to drag him to go get fresh air.

The fateful day comes around and you and Charles have agreed to keep it small.

Corny, sweet, and romantic is Charles definition of a good day and treats you accordingly.

You try to get Max to come eat something but end up just leaving it at the door.

Despite what people may think, Max is romantic at heart. Charles learned this last year when the Monegasque asked him if he was doing anything with Kelly for the holiday.

You and Charles are lounging on the sofa with a movie playing in the background. His arm draped around you and mouth pressing silly kisses along your jaw.

“I can feel your worry radiating from here.” Charles stops his kisses and you roll your eyes at him in response.

“He’s not eaten all day and I’ve heard him crying. Just wish I could help is all.”

Charles hums in your ear. “We could see if he wants a distraction.” He punctuates his sentence with a cheeky smile.

“Charles Perceval Leclerc! You can not seriously be suggesting what I think you are.” You playfully bat his arm. “I highly doubt he would neither want that or like that.”

“How about we ask and then go from there.”

“I think you just want him to fuck you.” This time it’s your turn to give a cheeky smile.

~

This is definitely not how you envisioned asking Max about this would go. His teary eyes haven’t looked away from Charles since the pretty male started talking.

This left you in an odd place of trying to read his reactions and getting absolutely nothing.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to or if you’re not into it. We would completely understand.” Charles laughs but you can tell he’s nervous. His body language betrays him.

Max looks between the two of you like he’s considering something. “You’re telling me you’ve both been crushing on me since last year? And I didn’t notice?”

“You’re very oblivious at times.” You shrug.

“That’s fair but also not the point.” Max stands up out of the bed and starts pacing. “I just don’t understand why me. You two are amazing people and you’re so great together.”

“Y/N has a numbered list of reasons in her phone that we’ve created in case this ever happened.” Charles looks at you expectantly but Your already pulling up the list.

“-please don’t read it I’m already blushing and that will make it worse. Maybe one day but not now.”

All of you freeze at the fact he insinuated a future.

“Does this mean you like us back?” Charles almost purrs. He’s so flirty now but if this goes farther then just a confession tonight he’ll be stuttering and weak in the knees. You know from experience.

Max is the stuttering mess right now however. He’s lost all of his words and is simply gesturing with his hands.

“Breathe Maxy, take your time.” He manages a few and usable to get a grip on his thoughts.

“I’ve to confess something first.” You both look at him expectedly but don’t push him. “The reason Kelly cheated on me is because she’d found a journal of mine. It was a thing my therapist told me to do and so I did. When you two started coming around more, I fell hard. For both of you. I wrote about to hopefully understand myself better and get the thoughts out of my head but they stayed and I hated myself for it. She read it and thought I cheated first so she just did it back.”

He’s in the verge of tears again but you and Charles can only stare I’d utter disbelief. Apparently, both of you are also oblivious.

“Please say something.”

“I think it must be fate.” Again that smirk is tugging at Charles lips.

The air in the room is replaced by a new tension. The kind Charles was originally insinuating before you three started talking.

“So about that proposal then…”

Valentine’s Day definitely couldn’t have ended any better.

[visionofvoid]

how they ask you out/how you ask them out - part one

Carlos Sainz:

Ezekiel was the first to notice that the two of you were interested in one another, though you would both deny it. He wasn’t annoyed with the fact that his best friend might have feelings for his sister, out of everyone Carlos was the one man that wasn’t family he would trust with you and it went the other way, Ezekiel knew you weren’t someone that was only interested in him for the life he could promise you. So, he made it a small mission of his to set the two of you up during the holiday season. 

The two of you had been stealing glances at one another throughout the small and intimate Christmas Eve dinner that Ezekiel and his wife, Magdalena, had planned. The kids were now tucked away in bed, excited for the next morning where they would receive their presents from Santa. The four adults now sat in the cosy living room, Magdalena tucked under Ezekiel’s arm. You and Carlos were on opposite ends of the other couch, both yearning for what the other two had. 

“Sorry we didn’t make it out to see the lights, I know how much you loved that before you moved.” You shrugged your shoulders, sending your older brother a soft smile. 

“I’m just happy the kids are in bed at a good time for you. Always next year.” Carlos knew that this was his opening, though he needed to make it seem friendly, especially that they were seated in front of his best friend and her older brother. 

“I have nothing else to do tonight. How about I take you?” You couldn’t hide your blushing cheeks fast enough and had hoped that he wouldn’t notice it. Ezekiel tried to contain his excitement, his wife elbowing him in the stomach to quieten him down. “What do you say?”

“I’ll go get a jacket.”

Charles Leclerc:

“You just gonna stand there or introduce yourself?”

Charles wasn’t used to extroverted girls in clubs. He knew they liked to play coy, give him signals using their eyes from across the room in the hopes it would make them look alluring, mysterious, and yeah, sometimes it did work. But he was just taken back as she stopped dancing and looked at him. Her friends continued dancing, forming a circle behind her yet still keeping a close eye on her in case she showed signs of being uncomfortable. 

“Charles Leclerc. And you are?” You bore a grin on your face, your eyes floating from the shoes he wore to the top of his hair. 

“Emotionally unavailable, incredibly high maintenance and not from around here.” He seemed confused at first before letting out a chuckle, the music bringing either more people in to dance or to see who caught the attention of the Ferrari driver. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you my name if you take me somewhere nice.” Charles tapped his pockets feeling everything he needed inside; his wallet, his phone, his car keys. What did he have to lose? It wasn’t as if this was the start to some sort of fairytale. No, this was simply going to be a fling for the two of them, no matter how much she was intriguing. One night will have to do. 

“Where would you like to go, belle?” Charles questioned, smirking as your cheeks flushed red. 

“You're the local, you get to decide.”

“If I get to pick then this might become a date.” He was feeling cocky, sure of himself. 

“Better make my last night here worth it.” You had a funny feeling about this and not in the ‘this guy might take me somewhere secluded and kill me’ way, but in a way you felt an immense amount of excitement. 

Daniel Ricciardo: 

“Oh come on, I’m not that bad, am I?” Daniel was having a rather bad day. Not only did you beat him to his favourite car spot yet again but his ex was creating and spreading horrible rumours about him. Everyone knew his character, what he was like and knew he would never in a million years cheat on his partner so it hurt that Heidi would stoop that low to try and get back at him. Their relationship had simply run its course, it was nothing malicious, or so he thought. 

You were tasked with getting some data from the fan favourite driver and he was being nothing but rude and arrogant. You and Daniel had never really seen eye to eye much to the dismay of your uncle but you kept everything professional for the sake of your job. You thought Daniel was exuberant and couldn’t understand why he didn’t like you. He seemed to ignore you before finally sighing. 

“Just having a shit day.”

“Well, you seem to be having a shit day all the time. You can either let it get to you, let it consume you or you can bounce back, show whatever is making you all hot and broody and moody that you’re so much better without them.” Daniel looked up from the simulator chair and right at you, knowing you were right. “Go out and get a drink with some friends or something.”

“I don’t really have anyone here at the moment. They’re either all back home or racing or, yeah. Lame, hey?” You had never seen Daniel this down before and you weren’t a fan. You’d much rather him glare at you, beep his horn at you when you take his beloved park, just anything but mopey and sad. 

“Well then how about you come to mine? I have wine, tequila, beer and two parking spaces so we don’t have to battle it out to get the best one.” You offered. Daniel knew from other workers that you were bubbly, incredibly kind and friendly and this was his first time experiencing it, when he wasn’t letting his own ego get the best of him. “It’s not a date, so don’t let that get to your head. Just a nice person offering a few hours to forget about what’s going on. What do you say?”

“Tequila you said?”

George Russell:

For the most part you would stay home with your mother and two brothers but on the occasion you would surprise and visit your father throughout the season. You were quite lucky in the fact that you could work from wherever; travelling, home, in a park or cafe. Being a travel blogger meant that visiting your father and step-mother was literally a part of your job. You documented the second last race of the 2022 season which was a delight for your fans that were familiar with your father and with Formula One. Whenever you travelled to visit and watch a race you made it so it was like a travelling special. It was your first time in Sāo Paulo and it was the first win for Mercedes and George for the season. 

George was over the moon, absolutely elated with the win and to be standing on the podium. He was surrounded by people ever since he finished the race with reporters wanting to congratulate him, with his teammate and team principal wanting to start the celebrations early. He had noticed that with every race he was in where he did well, finishing on the podium regardless of whether it was third, second or first place, you were always there, cheering him on from the back of the pit. It was almost as if you were a lucky charm, seeing you would always encourage a good race.

You heard a knock at your hotel room door as you were getting dressed for the dinner and drinks that was organised on behalf of George’s win by her father and Susie. You knew it would turn into one big party after a few hours so wanted to wear something comfortable but lightweight. You hair was parted in a messy bun as you got up from the chair where you had all your makeup stationed, walking to the door to open it without looking through the peephole. You were shocked at first but offered a bright smile. 

“George! Congratulations!” He was still in his racing suit meaning he only just got back to the hotel after the end of the race press conference and interviews. “You should go have a shower! We only have an hour and a half until we’re to meet everyone downstairs.” He just stood there, looking at her whilst she rambled on. “George?” He seemed to break out of his trance. “Is everything okay?”

“Let me take you out sometime? Just us, no one else. Like a date. Actually, I don't want it to be ‘like’ a date, I want to take you out on a date.” He paused for a moment before taking a deep breath in and out and started again. “You have absolutely consumed every thought of mine ever since I met you and I want to get to know you more. I feel like I drive the best I can when you’re at a race, not saying I need you for me to win a race, oh goodness that sounds horrible. Y/N, may I take you out on a date?”

[unhinged-jackles]

Dearest mutual. I know nothing of formula 1. Why are the ferrari and red bull brands fighting???

oh frosty i am so so so glad you asked bc now i get to be insane.

(this got super long so I essentially have an essay below the cut. if you're curious about formula 1, give it a read!)

Ok so first let me get into a few key people in this. Lewis Hamilton is a 7 time F1 World Drivers Champion and he has the most race wins of anyone in F1 history. He is regarded as one the best if not THE best F1 driver of all time. He has been on the Mercedes team since 2013 and has won 6 of his WDCs with them.

However, in 2021, he lost the championship to Max Verstappen of team Red Bull in a controversial final race in Abu Dhabi. Max Verstappen has been the WDC since 2021, winning in both the the 2022 and 2023 season. His 2023 season broke records I believe, winning 19 out of 22 races. Not only is Verstappen an incredible driver, just a real force to be reckoned with on the race track, but Red Bull's F1 cars are just fucking insane, especially in 2022 and 2023 because of new regulations leading to a new designs. It literally sounds like a fucking rocket and he wins by large margins.

On the other hand, the Mercedes cars that dominate from 2013 to 2020 took a huge dip in 2022 due to the new designs because of new regulations, and Hamilton has been very vocal about these cars not being up to par. Hamilton has always been very loyal to Mercedes, so it came as an extreme shock when it was announced on Feb 1st that he would be moving to team Ferrari in the 2025 season. Like imagine if when Zayn left 1D he went to 5SOS. Or if a member of Stray Kids joined BTS. Idk what else to compare it to but it was fucking insane, which is why I got into F1 because I was like "ok idk what's going on but I do want to know." However, with Hamilton moving to Ferrari in 2025, this means that Carlos Sainz is essentially fired from Ferrari (also I should have mentioned this before, there are 10 F1 teams and each team has two drivers). Charles Leclerc is Ferrari's favorite, I've seen him being referenced as the 'Prince of Ferrari' by fans. So it came as no surprise that soon after Hamilton announced he's joined Ferrari in 2025, Sainz issued a statement that he and Ferrari would be parting ways at the end of 2024.

So now the definite line up for Ferrari in 2025 is Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. Max Verstappen is also staying with Red Bull but the future of Sergio "Checo" Perez is uncertain. His contract is up at the end of 2024 and there have been rumors that he might be replaced.

Carlos Sainz has not signed with another team for 2025, at least not publicaly, so there is a lot of speculation on where he may go next. He is the only driver not from Red Bull who won a Grand Prix in 2023. Verstappen won 19, Perez won 2, and Sainz won 1. While everybody else I mentioned in this post did have a higher standing in the final rankings of the 2023 season, Sainz did get a trophy, and that's a result that matters.

2025 is going to be an incredible season to see the fight between Hamilton and Verstappen. Hamilton signing with Ferrari after finished 12 years with Mercedes shows he's really doing whatever is takes to get that 8th WDC, because that would make him the F1 driver with the most world championships of all time. Verstappen is a favorite to be the 2024 Champion, so he will probably be defending the title.

Now let's say that Perez doesn't renew his contract and Sainz has a good season this year. There is a non-zero chance that he could sign with Red Bull. Sainz was in their F1 academy, and he was beat out for the Red Bull F1 seat by Verstappen at the beginning of their F1 careers. I would literally do anything to see real hard racing between Carlos Sainz for Red Bull and Charles Leclerc for Ferrari, because frankly Ferrari keeps prioritizing Leclerc over Sainz, even if Sainz has a better pace. So to have the the 2025 lineup for Red Bull be Max Verstappen AND Carlos Sainz, while the fucking FERRARI team is Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc would be so insanely awesome.

If you read this far, thank you for coming to my ted talk 💋

[petit-papillion]

"But never writes off lewis hamilton"

That's funny that he says this as if lewis was some underdog in this, when in fact everyone is actually writing off charles. And he also low key kind of writes off charles with the "go off road" thing

Its such a weird thing, because if we look at last season, charles didn't have more go off road moments than carlos for example, but they only mention this for charles. Lewis himself also had his moments, like crashing with his teammate

Idk its weird that the only one he pointed a flaw is charles

Yeah, ain't nobody writing off Hamilton, dude. Well, I guess I will just speak for myself anyway. I know some people who think he can only win because he gets preferential treatment at Mercedes. Sure, Jan.

Anyway, back to your ask/comments. I am going to give Brundle the benefit of the doubt here, and think what he meant was that Charles is so fast and trying to get so much out of his car, that it sometimes results in him running into walls/flying off the road. That is different than ending up in the gravel or crashing into another car because you goofed up.

There does seem to be a large group of people who think Charles is now done for. I don't think Lewis underestimates Charles (and vice versa for that matter), but there is that narrative of Charles being accident-prone, not WDC-material, a bottler, a tragic story, etc. And I would like nothing better if Charles finally did not have to fight his car and/or team this year, and could really show what he is capable of, before Lewis joins Ferrari.

[f1]

Vowles says extraordinary driver Alonso key factor behind Aston Martins recent F1 charge

New Williams team boss James Vowles has offered his thoughts on the F1 pecking order, and specifically the step taken by Aston Martin over the winter, after the green machine impressed at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. Building on their pre-season promise, Aston Martin were at the sharp end of the action in Sakhir as Fernando Alonso topped both Friday and Saturday practice, before posting the fifth-fastest time in qualifying – behind only the Red Bull and Ferrari cars. READ MORE: ‘This is just the beginning’ – Alonso warns there is ‘more to come’ from himself and Aston Martin after Bahrain podium On race day, the 41-year-old displayed his racing guile with bold passes on Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes and Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari – while making the most of Charles Leclerc’s retirement – to claim a stunning podium for himself and his new team. Asked about the progress their rivals had made, Vowles was keen to note the performance of two-time world champion Alonso, and injured team mate Lance Stroll, alongside what Aston Martin have been doing back at their factory. “I think they have an extraordinary driver who’s in the car. Lance did very well as well. That’s not taking anything away from them – the team’s taken some large steps forward,” said Vowles over the Bahrain weekend. This feature is currently not available because you need to provide consent to functional cookies. Please update your cookie preferences 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix: The key moves that saw Alonso race to a podium finish on Aston Martin debut “They’re clearly investing […] to go forward. The wind tunnel is a shared entity with Mercedes, the whole rear of the car is pretty much a shared entity with Mercedes, so what they’ve done well is aerodynamic development.” Vowles suggested, however, that the performance shift may also have something to do with certain teams under-performing at the 2023 opener – Alpine and McLaren both encountering tricky events and his former Mercedes squad set to go “radical” with future developments in response to their lacklustre showing. READ MORE: Verstappen hopes Alonso can join the F1 title fight as he says race wins are ‘definitely on the table’ for Aston Martin “I ask the question back to you: I wonder if... perhaps some of the other teams have lost their way a little bit, and that they’ll come back to the fore. I still think it’s very difficult to consistently break into the top three,” he commented. While Aston Martin push to break into F1’s front-running group, Vowles is focused on strengthening the Williams operation, building a solid foundation and helping to lift them off the foot of the F1 constructors’ standings – a position they fell to last season. Alonso and Aston Martin mixed it with Vowles’ former team, Mercedes, in Bahrain One person Vowles could call on for some extra background before taking up the role was George Russell, with whom he worked at Mercedes, and Williams’ new leader is gradually painting the full picture of the operation that he needs. Asked if he had ‘downloaded’ Russell’s knowledge of Williams from his three seasons racing there, Vowles replied: “Not everything you can get. As you go through the process and you learn certain elements, it’s interesting to bounce those ideas and thoughts. READ MORE: Vowles says Williams will decide on power unit supplier for 2026 this year “But he’s been, as Toto [Wolff, Mercedes Team Principal] has, as many other people have, incredibly useful in understanding some of the strengths and weaknesses of Williams.” A weakness Vowles has already set about addressing is the lack of a Technical Director, following the departure of FX Demaison over the winter – the Briton recently commenting that it is his top priority. via Formula 1 News https://www.formula1.com

[amirahart]

Poker & Luck || Charles Leclerc

Pairing: Charles Leclerc x (Y/N)

Warnings: Bad writing, terrible summary lol

Summary: Charles’ friends take him out to the Monte Carlo Casino in order to cheer up his mood before the upcoming Monaco Grand Prix. If he can’t find his luck in the grid, maybe he will find it in a poker table.

Author’s note: My first piece! It’s definitely bad, but I’m posting it anyway. Hope you enjoy! Also, if anyone knows who’s gif this is pls tell me, and make sure to like and tell me what you want to see next!

Xoxo Art

The Monte Carlo Casino: home to luxury, elegance, champagne, and the perfect way for Charles Leclerc to get his mind off the curse that seemed to plague him on his home Grand Prix. If he couldn’t find his luck in the grid, maybe he would do so in a poker table. At least that’s how Pierre had put it before he dragged him to his car.

They parked in front of the magnificent building and handed the keys to the valet. Right outside the building waiting for them were Lando and Carlos dressed in suits. “Finally mate, we’ve been waiting for ever”, Carlos said and clasped Charles’ back.

“We’ll have so much fun you won’t even think about Sunday”, Lando offered as he started to ascend the stairs. Charles didn’t respond, he simply scoffed, which earned him a slap on the back of the head from Pierre.

“Mate, we’ll drink, we’ll spend money, we’ll even find you a pretty girl. Don’t be negative”

“You can’t not have fun at the Monte Carlo Casino, mate. Come on!” Carlos told him and gently pushed him up the stairs, joining the rest of the drivers.

The first thing they did was head over to the bar. Charles stayed sober, seeing as he was driving, and also was not in the mood for drinking. The same could not be said for the other three drivers, who were downing champagne flute after champagne flute and shot after shot. All three of them were in a great mood, especially Lando, who was laughing at everything the other three said, and was having a hard time staying on the bar stool. That boy could not hold his liquor.

Soon enough, Pierre and Carlos started pestering the other two to go outside to the casino area. Lando agreed immediately, but Charles, who was still kind of sober, was not very open to the idea. He was not in the mood to lose right now, but Pierre was very convincing. After a couple of minutes of back and forth bickering, Lando laughing at the word “come”, and Carlos downing the last of the champagne, Pierre all but dragged Charles out to the main area of the casino and made him join a poker table.

They exchanged their money for chips and bought into the game. Lando was feeling very lucky, and immediately bet 1000€ without even seeing his cards, which earned a laugh from everyone on the table. Charles still felt apprehensive, even after he was dealt good cards, so he just bet 200€.

After the end of the first round, everyone had lost their money except for Lando, which made Charles’ loss even more annoying. Maybe he just didn’t have any luck at all in his home. In the night where he was supposed to have fun and forget about his anxiety for the upcoming race, he lost 100€.

He was about to leave the table, maybe go get a drink, seeing as the idea of being drunk suddenly sounded very appealing, and then just call a cab home and call it a night. He appreciated the effort his friends put in cheering him up, but it really was not working.

He was about to cash out, but then he felt a nudge on his shoulder and heard the sweetest voice call out to him. “Excuse me?”

He turned around to face the owner of the voice, and he was met with the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Even in the dark of the casino, he could still make out her beautiful features. Her satin hair looked as soft as a cloud, her plumb red lips looked so kissable, her dark red dress hugged her body and showed just enough to make Charles go crazy.

He realized that the girl had asked him something, but he had not heard a word she said. He shook her head to snap out of his trance. “I’m sorry, what was that?”, he asked her, making her giggle a bit. Her laughter was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

“Is there an opening in this table?”, she asked again, but before Charles could answer, there was a chime of voices from the rest of the table.

“Yes!”

“Absolutely!”

“Right next to our boy here”, the three drivers chimed in, having noticed the way that the Monegasque’s eyes lingered on the girl.

The girl cashed in and stood right next to Charles, who could not seem to peel his eyes off her. She turned her head and met his gaze, offering him a quick smile which rushed all his blood to his cheeks.

His friends immediately noticed, and Carlos, who was sitting the closest to him, tried to nudge him closer to her, which made him glare at the Spaniard. “Talk to her!”, he mouthed to her, and gave him another push towards her.

“So, um… do you live in Monaco?”, he asked, internally cringing at himself for the stupidity of his question. He didn’t ask for her name.

“Me? No, I’m just here for the Grand Prix”, she replied, which made all four drivers chuckle.

“You like Formula One? What’s your favorite team?”, he asked with newfound confidence.

“I like Ferrari, but their strategists are kind of fucking the drivers over. They could have been the best team on the grid, but they’re screwing it”, she replied as she got her cards dealt.

“Yeah? What’s your favorite driver”, he had a smug smile plastered on his face.

“I like Leclerc, mostly”

“And you came to see him in Monaco?”, he said, surprise evident in his voice.

“What, is it about the stupid curse? I don’t believe that he’s actually cursed, I believe he can perform as well in Monaco as he does in Spa and Monza and everywhere else”, she glanced at her cards and bet a few chips.

“You don’t?”

“No. I just think the stress of being at home gets to his head and he forgets to have fun. When he enjoys the race and doesn’t entirely focus on wanting to win, that’s when he does his best driving. He just has to relax and remember that one race does not define him, that he’s one of the most talented and capable drivers not only on the grid currently, but maybe ever, and just feel confident. I’m sure we’ll see great things from him, and a win in Monaco is for sure in the cards for him.”

Charles considered her words, and even though it was simple advice, hearing the words from her lips gave them different gravity. “Charles, mate, you have to bet”, Pierre called out to him.

The girl looked at Pierre, and realization flooded her face. She then looked at Lando and Carlos, her cheeks reddening more and more. Lastly, she looked at Charles, who was trying to contain his grin, and failing miserably.

“You’re- Oh my God, no!”, she gasped, her mouth falling open. Charles could not hold his laughter in at her surprised face. At that, she hit his arm, and Charles mock-winced in pain. “You let me go on and on about F1 as if I’m an expert and you’re a fucking Ferrari driver?”

“Yeah, but just because you’re really cute when you talk”, he winked at her, making the blood rush to her cheeks.

“I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you. That’s the most embarrassing moment of my entire life”

“No, don’t worry about it, it’s dark here, and I’m betting you’ve had a few drinks”

“It’s still very embarrassing. And you still have to bet”, she reminded him, and he quickly put a few chips in the pile, without really looking at them.

“Wow, you’re that confident in your cards?”, she asked looking at his chips, which made Charles realize that he bet 5000€.

“Yes, Charles here is an excellent poker player!”, Carlos chirped.

“If not the best”, Pierre added.

“You are? Then maybe I might just have competition.”, she smiled, and Charles instinctively leaked his lips.

A few rounds in, the girl seemed to continuously be winning. After she had gathered quite a few chips, most of them being Charles’, she decided she had enough and cashed out. A knot tied in Charles’ stomach, not ready to let the beautiful stranger go. Pierre shot him another glare, and Carlos pushed him towards her again, making him stumble and lose his balance. To center himself, he grabbed the stranger’s arm, which gained her attention. “I- I never got your name”, he asked her, and her eyes seemed to fill with joy,

“(Y/N). My name is (Y/N) ”, Charles smiled to himself.

“Gorgeous name for a gorgeous girl”, he made (Y/N) smile and look away to unsuccessfully try to hide the blush that was creeping up to her face. “Would you do me the honor of helping me with poker? I could use some luck”

 (Y/N) pretend to think about it, when she was over the moon that he asked him to join him.

“I thought you were a great poker player, if not the best”, she joked, mirroring the words that his friends had said earlier.

“But having such a pretty girl by my side makes my luck increase, and I cannot pass on that”, he told her and then moved to stand closer to her. Charles was itching to put his hands all over her, but he kept his composure, wanting to be as respectful as possible.

The dealer cashed in some new players, and then dealt everyone their cards. Charles looked at his cards and then showed (Y/N) . He went to bet, but she put her small hand on top of his, stopping him. “You need a five to win”, she whispered in his ear, her lips brushing against it, making him shiver. “All four of them have already passed. I say fold”.

He absentmindedly rubbed circles with his thumb on her hand as she talked to him, and without thinking about it, he folded his cards. They continued watching the game unfold, and when it was Lando’s turn, he continued to bet off his weirdly large stack of chips. He had not lost a single game tonight, it was honestly ridiculous. 

Charles grabbed (Y/N) ’s waist and pulled her tight against his body. “I’ll bet you a drink that somehow, Lando will win”, he whispered in her ear, making her chuckle again, which in turn made him smile widely.

“I’ll get in on that”, she said, and let her head rest against his chest, which made Charles’ heartbeat fasten.

Charles was indeed right. Lando continued his winning streak. The only person that he could not best seemed to be (Y/N) . He did a little celebratory dance, which made everyone burst out laughing, especially when he almost fell at the end. Pierre grabbed him before he hit the floor, and him and Carlos steadied him. “Charles, mate, we’re going to head to the hotel before he throws up everywhere”, Pierre told him. “But you don’t have to come back, we can go with Carlos’ car”, he quickly added, not wanting to ruin whatever those two had going on.

“I think I need to head home too. I’m going to have to look for a cab”, she said to Charles, and he could not interrupt fast enough.

“Nonsense, I’ll drive you home”, he offered, tightening his grip on her waist.

“No, it’s okay, I’m sure you have plenty to do tomorrow and you have to help your friend…”

“He has nothing to do tomorrow”

“All is taken care of”

“I’m perfect!”, Lando said with a hiccup, adding to the chorus of chants that the other two drivers said, not wanting to separate the two of them. Charles looked at  (Y/N) expectedly, and she couldn’t help the grin that spread on her face.

Charles maintained the hold on her waist and led her to where the valet was waiting for them with his 488 pista spider. He only let go of her waist to grab the keys. Charles opened the door for her, offering her his hand to help her in the car.

Even at this hour, the streets of Monte Carlo were as busy as ever. It was one of the first times that Charles could say that being stuck in the roads was not annoying in the slightest, because it meant that he got to spend more time with A (Y/N) .

They felt comfortable together, as if they knew each other for ages. The conversation was flowing naturally, both of them laughing and having fun. Charles got the confidence to slide his hand on her thigh, which made  (Y/N) ‘s stomach flutter with butterflies. Charles kept stealing glances at her, not being able to tear his eyes off her at each red light. “What?”, she asked with a smile on her face when he looked at her again.

“Nothing. You’re just so beautiful”, he told her, and she couldn’t conceal the smile that plastered on her face.

After a while, they finally arrived in front of (Y/N) ’s hotel. Charles quickly jumped off the car and opened the door for her, once again helping her get out of the car. He kept her hand in his own as they made the small walk to the entrance, and then brought it to his lips to kiss her knuckles. “It was lovely to meet you, (Y/N) ”

“It was lovely to meet you too, Charles”, she said with a smile. Charles took a deep breath to brace himself for what he was about to ask.

“Can I have your number?”, he mumbled quickly, which made her giggle. “I still have to buy you that drink, from the bet”, he said more slowly, gaining more confidence as he saw the way that  (Y/N) twirled her leg. She dug in her purse and grabbed a pen, and then grabbed his hand, scribbling her number on his palm.

“Only if you promise you’ll never let me ramble about F1 ever again”, she mused, and put the pen back into her bag.

“Can’t make that promise. I told you, you’re adorable when you ramble”

 Just as she was about to turn to leave, she put one hand on his chest and the other on his shoulder, went up on her toes, and kissed his cheek. “Goodnight Charles”, she said, and before he could reply, she turned and left, making sure to sway her hips a little bit more as she entered the hotel.

Charles stayed there for a few minutes, dumbfounded, just staring at where  (Y/N) had walked off. He touched his cheek, where she had kissed him. He could still feel the soft touch of her lips, it was sending sparkles up and down his body.

He drove off to the hotel he was staying to prepare for the Grand Prix with his head still in the clouds. He opened the door, and found Pierre and Carlos sat in the small living room of the hotel, waiting for him expectedly. When they saw him, they immediately burst out laughing. “I was going to ask how it went mate, but I think it went well”, Carlos said between his laughter.

“What do you mean?”, Charles asked, kind of offended that they kept laughing. Instead of replying, Pierre just patted a finger on his cheek and laughed again.

Charles quickly went to look at himself in the mirror, where he found that he had a red kiss mark where (Y/N) ’s gorgeous lips had touched him. All he could do was smile like an idiot.

Maybe he wasn’t as unlucky in Monaco as he thought he was.

[woodchoc-magnum]

L*ne St*r Hate Watch 3x17

Disclaimer: Hi, if you love the show, please don't read this

It wouldn't be a hate watch without Eddie Diaz giving us his strength and courage:

Once again I am pretty much unspoiled, so let's go

Tommy and Charles' little brother Julius, who kissed her, are cleaning out Charles' clothes and I have a bad feeling about where this is going

Lotta longing looks going on here from both directions

He's just invited her to his rock concert

Omg are we actually going to have an emergency? In 911:LS??? I didn't think they did those anymore

Dude fell down a trash chute

Okay so I'm not calling sexism or anything because everyone's equal but like, it's suspicious that Owen assigned Marjan to clean out the bin so they could extract the dude instead of getting Paul or Mateo to do it

I mean maybe I should be happy that Marjan actually has something to do in this episode

Oh shit this due is about to be trash compacted

Mateo was the only one to think to actually pull the power cord out of the wall, while Owen just stood there looking like a moron

Now we're at Judd and Grace's with Wyatt and his mom and his new stepdad

Wyatt is in the running for an internship at this fancy company and he would have to relocate to Austin, so naturally Judd and Grace are like, you should just live with us

Which means he's definitely going to get the job and move in with them

Nepotism alert – this episode was directed by Chad Lowe

Mateo and Nancy are sleeping together

Nancy wants to tell everyone and Mateo is being reluctant for some reason, dude should be thrilled, she's a babe

She is so much taller than him

Omg Paul has lines???

Oh shit, Mateo being smaller than Nancy is going to be a plot line isn't it

DUDE YOU SHOULD BE COUNTING YOUR LUCKY STARS TO HAVE A STATUESQUE QUEEN ON YOUR ARM

Nancy really wants to tell everyone and Mateo is being a dick about it, ngl

How have I never noticed how good Carlos looks in a uniform?

Now they're all at TK and Carlos' apartment playing… a board game. Settlers of Catan? Maybe? Nancy is not helping Mateo and it's all because he won't tell everyone that they're banging

Oh the girls are fighting

Mateo is throwing a temper tantrum and leaving the world's lamest board game party

Oh shit Julius has a guitar and he's singing "You Don't Know Me" and FUCK YOU GUYS HE'S SO HOT

HE'S SINGING IT TO TOMMY SHIT YOU GUYS

Dude is straight up serenading her

Like I get him being into her, it's GINA TORRES. Can you blame this guy? I mean REALLY

Oh shit now he's in her house

They're going to bang

THEY'RE KISSING AGAIN

He's going for it

SHE'S KISSING HIM BACK OH SHIT THEY'RE BANGING YOU GUYS

Now she's leaving guilt flowers on Charles' grave

"Hi honey, I fucked your little brother last night"

Oh would love if this was like a Carrie moment where a hand bursts out of the grave and grabs her and pulls her in

I've read too much Stephen King don't mind me

She's going to ask Julius to stay

Great TK gets lines too uuggghhhh

"Over it? Over what?" TK asks in a monotone

Nancy's now calling him out for his choice of board games and you know what? Fair call

ANOTHER EMERGENCY????

Okay so this lady is trying to leave her abusive husband, she's backing out of the driveway with her kids in the back, and one of the kids is like "mommy I forgot my toy" and so she gets out the car, puts it in neutral and then locks the keys inside??? And then the car starts rolling backwards down the hill

So to stop it she threw her body under the wheels

Okay so the abusive husband is on the way to the scene and the poor lady is terrified

Oh shit Owen's about to punch someone again

OH OWEN GOT PUNCHED??? Wow I enjoyed that

Carlos arrested the father for assault and Owen got punched and you know what? Everyone is a winner in this situation

Guess he's over the clown fear now, good for him

Wyatt turned up at his job interview in a suit and everyone else is in casual clothes, what a nerd

I bet he's really going to impress the guy and get the job

I take that back, it's not going well

He can still turn it around

He didn't turn it around

Now TK and Carlos are doing an intervention on Mateo and Nancy over the Catan bullshit

This is the dumbest storyline in the whole fucking world and I hate this show

Nancy is calling Mateo out for getting weird

Also Carlos said "in this house we Catan" and I'm like imagine being so rigid that when someone says, hey, can we play a board game that doesn't suck, you say no? I mean play board games with my friends and we mix it up all the time

Variety is the spice of life, guys

"then what's your problem dude?" "you're so much taller than me" LAMEEEE

Ugh is this meant to be touching? Men can be shorter than women??? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

He's afraid they're going to laugh at her for being with him I am rolling my eyes so hard

Nancy's bi, which is cool and everyone seemed surprised by it

Judd is feeling bad about dressing Wyatt up in the suit

Tommy is wearing a very fetching cable knit sweater and it looks cosy

Julius just said that he's in love with her and yikes dude slow your roll

And he's leaving

He says he can't fill Charles' shoes and he's going to New Orleans

Love 'em and leave 'em, it's that rock & roll lifestyle

Judd is going to have a conversation with the guy who was going to hire Wyatt and get him to hire him

I feel like Judd's going to get arrested but anyway

Well there is construction going on so maybe he'll end up saving the dude's life

We're definitely building up to an emergency

Oh shit there's a gas leak

Oh SHIT IS THIS BUILDING GOING TO BLOW UP WITH JUDD IN IT I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD

I THINK IT IS BECAUSE I SAW PART OF THE PREVIEW YOU GUYS I'M SO SCARED

HE'S IN THE ELEVATOR

OH MY GOD IT'S GOING TO BLOW UP

IT JUST BLEW UP

THE WHOLE BUILDING IS FUCKING COLLAPSING????

That's not a well made building

Wyatt just narrowly missed getting fucking flattened in Judd's truck

Okay so I knew the spoiler that Judd was in a building collapse but I thought it was next week when he was back at work, I wasn't expecting a CLIFFHANGER

But if I'm honest I don't really care because he will be fine, and if he's not fine I stop watching the show. So we all win!

Final thoughts: after a lot of very Owen-heavy episodes, this was a very Owen-lite episode, as though they realised they have other cast members on the show - so it featured a lot of the "rest of the team" at TK and Carlos' apartment.

In saying that, I was really not that invested in anything that was going on? The "tension" between Mateo and Nancy is kinda dumb, and Judd's storyline was really boring... and I do think it's for the best that Julius is leaving because... that would really complicate things for Tommy's kids. Like, he's their uncle? But now he's Uncle Dad? Idk it's just a very icky situation. He's clearly way more into her than she is to him, and so I think writing him out of the show is probably a good idea.

Idk, I was bored. Looking forward to Judd being rescued in the finale and his reunion with Grace!

Eddie Diaz to close this thing out (one episode to go you guys!):

[ilovejevsjeans]

IS RICCIARDO WORTH THE MONEY TO RENAULT?

Defining what a driver is worth to a team is a challenge, doubly so when it’s Daniel Ricciardo at Renault. If you’re talking about a driver like Lewis Hamilton who wins the majority of the races and the title, then by definition they are worth every penny, but with Renault known to be paying Ricciardo $25million per year for his two seasons how does that stack up?

Absolute results are of limited value as a measure and only really count when you are in a frontrunning team. Ricciardo isn’t and was never expected to be winning races within the scope of his two-year deal with Renault. What he was sold was a team with the potential to get to the front, with hoped-for progress in 2019-2020 leading to the promised land of the new rules in ’21.

Now, the new rules have been put back, Ricciardo is on his way to McLaren and Renault spent the first half of his time there getting nowhere – hence the desire to leave. But Renault is making progress, has beaten McLaren, which uses the same engine, in four of the last five races and now has a realistic chance of challenging for third in the constructors’ championship. This was the upward trajectory Ricciardo was supposed to be part of.

Ricciardo was recruited as a big-name star driver to help take Renault to the promised land not of a single third place, but something more than that. So has this spend been justified for the team or could it have been better used elsewhere?

Team principal Cyril Abiteboul, whose response to Ricciardo’s decision to leave lacked grace and showed how hard hit the team was by it, has talked up the value the Australian has brought.

“It’s equally important to the team, to Daniel, to myself also,” said Abieboul. “We’ve been questioned about this decision of him joining us and also his decision of joining the team – in both directions really.

“It was very important for everyone to put the commentators at bay and show why it made sense at the time. Yes, it was disappointing last year, you could argue that it was one year too early. But there’s not that many opportunities to have a driver like Daniel, who was available on the market.

“So I still believe that it was the right thing to do at the time. The team wouldn’t be what it is today without Daniel – and maybe thanks also to the year that we had together last year, which was indeed a very painful year, which has pushed all of us to take the measures that that we’ve taken, and also with the team in Enstone with Marcin Budkowski and so on and so forth.

“So now we are finding ourselves in a much better position for this year and for next year and Daniel is capable of doing this type of thing. So yes, it’s a statement.

“I know that our communication was a bit negative when we found out that he would not stay with the team at the time, but I think that it’s precisely because it was an honest, emotional, unfiltered communication at the time. Daniel is also being unfiltered and genuine in what he’s doing today for the team.”

It’s standard practice for a team boss to be positive about a driver after a result, particularly one who was at the forefront of the decision to spend such an enormous sum of money on that driver. But after the initial negative reaction, the fact the relationship between team and driver remains strong speaks volumes.

While at Ferrari, the team’s decision to drop Sebastian Vettel has caused endless friction, what happened at Renault has not had the same effect. Partly that reflects the nature of the characters involved, but crucially Ferrari has its spearhead in Charles Leclerc.

Ricciardo remains Renault’s spearhead and it’s logical for team and driver to want to get the best out of each other as the season runs down. As Ricciardo has stressed, every race counts in F1 and it serves him well to had to McLaren following a strong run of results.

So where would Renault have been without Ricciardo? Chances are, it would have continued to run Nico Hulkenberg and perhaps kept Carlos Sainz alongside him. If not, perhaps Esteban Ocon would have come in a year earlier.

The impact Sainz would have had is difficult to judge as he reached a higher level when he moved to McLaren – by his own admission the step he made from 2018 to 2019 after leaving Renault was the biggest he’d made in his career – but in his final Renault season Hulkenberg was the stronger driver. Maybe that would have continued to be the case in ’19 without the change of scenery.

As Hulkenberg and Ocon have both definitively performed at a lower level than Ricciardo in 2019 and 2020, it’s fair to conclude that the car is being driven a little faster thanks to its driver choice. Ricciardo is a seriously quick driver and given he’s competing in a part of the field where a tenth or two can make a big difference, that is having an impact.

Last year, he outscored Hulkenberg 54-37 after a shaky start and this year he’s 78-36 up on Ocon. He’s also forcing Ocon to work hard to improve himself. Ricciardo has outqualified his team-mate in all nine dry qualifying sessions but Ocon did get closer than ever in the recent race at the Nurburgring. A Hulkenberg/Ocon combination might never have pushed itself on in quite the same way.

Then there’s the effect on Renault. Having a proven race-winner is a boost for any team but the day-to-day realities of racing in F1 can soon replace that feeling. But Ricciardo is an energetic and inspiring character and during the early races when he was struggling to adapt to a car that was very limited on corner entry and not compatible with his style, his attitude ensured the team wanted him to do well. This might sound obvious, but many an experience and proven driver has had the opposite effect when they’ve joined an underachieving team.

This helped to create a constructive environment where Ricciardo was able to benchmark the performance of the Renault against his experience of the Red Bull. That kind of knowledge is valuable and can help to ensure the right characteristics are pursued and the correct changes are made.

That Renault has made a good step from 2019 to 2020 proves this. The car was immediately better in terms of getting the power down at corner exit, but subsequent improvements in terms of rear downforce, upgrade packages further forward on the car that have worked far better than last year’s attempts have made Renault into a genuine all-rounder.

The driver does not design or engineer the car, so the responsibility for these improvements lies within the walls of Enstone and Viry, but Ricciardo has had a key part to play in terms of input into this process. Not only does everyone know that he’s a winning driver, which gives his opinions great strength, but he appears to have remained constructive with his contributions even when frustrated.

What’s more, he’s also not been afraid to admit when he has underperformed, admitting early last year that he had been a little shocked by the challenge of stepping from a frontrunning car into a midfield one and that his job was to adapt rather than endlessly blame the machinery.

Ricciardo’s contribution has likely played a part in ensuring the team could sign Fernando Alonso for 2021. While Renault was the only realistic choice for his F1 comeback, it’s unlikely he would have seen the value in joining the team were it still performing as it did in 2019 – inconsistent and only really strong on low downforce tracks. Ricciardo has, in effect, helped to prepare the team to be able to recruit his illustrious replacement.

Is this all worth $50million? Only Abiteboul can really answer that but given Ricciardo has played a central role in the team eliminating the fundamental weaknesses it had – and as Abiteboul suggests, this also had a role in the technical personnel changes that have had some positive effect with far more to come – he’s certainly been worth something.

If that $50m has given Renault nowhere to hide, no easy get-out by blaming drivers and no excuse to disregard the start comparisons in terms of characteristics between its products and those winning races, then it has been money well spent.

After all, what price is $50m over two years for an F1 team if it ensures that it can now justifiably aspire to challenge for wins if it aces the 2022 regulations when it might otherwise have carried on going around in the same circles?

Ricciardo has not and could not have transformed the team and perhaps it would have got to this point itself regardless of his presence. But his superb performances behind the wheel, which have been consistently good from the middle of last season onwards, his effervescent attitude and vast experience from Red Bull have allowed him to make an important contribution.

The team will have plenty of personnel who would argue their department could have done more with that amount of money spent on more facilities or more people – but that’s always the case regardless of how much you are spending on drivers.

And despite the age-old complaints of it all being about the car, the driver is the biological heart of the machine who must bring it all together and extract the potential. For its money Renault got exactly what it paid for – one of F1’s best drivers who has got the best out of it race after race this season. That’s all you can really ask for from a driver – and Ricciardo has delivered that and more. (X)

[walterfrodriguez]

See no evil: How a culture of secrecy boosts South Florida’s condo market

(Illustration by Adria Fruitos)

A lawyer with ties to Venezuela’s oil ministry, a member of the country’s “boliburguesía” elite and a money launderer sat around a Caracas office table while armed guards and a German shepherd with a shock collar stood watch.

The boliburgués placed his handgun on the table. It was November 2015, and the three Venezuelans were pressuring an unnamed associate to persist with a scheme that U.S. authorities would later allege embezzled $1.2 billion from the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA. Much of that money, according to a criminal complaint, ended up in South Florida real estate.

Among those reportedly alleged to be connected to the scheme: the three stepsons of the country’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro; a billionaire Venezuelan TV mogul; and former executives at PDVSA. Eight people have been charged in the case so far, while one defendant — a wealth manager at a Swiss bank — was arrested in August.

With a federal investigation ongoing, the U.S. attorney’s office could seize at least 16 South Florida properties tied to the defendants. But in the initial complaint filed in July 2018, only one was explicitly named: Unit 2205 at the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles. Federal officials allege this condo was ultimately transferred by Carmelo Urdaneta Aqui, who until 2015 was legal counsel to the Venezuelan oil ministry, to the alleged money launderer, José Vicente Amparan Croquer, as payment for services rendered.

Luxury real estate in South Florida has long served as a magnet for wealth from South America. The continent’s tycoons, celebrities, athletes and assorted hustlers have seen it both as a playground and a bank — a good place to invest or park cash, given its proximity, culture, weather and, most of all, its discretion: The provenance of the wealth has historically mattered little to Miami-area developers and brokers. What’s mattered is that their buyers have it.

But even though today’s tougher anti-money laundering laws impose stricter disclosure requirements on banks and lenders involved in real estate purchases, those who build product and those who sell for them can continue to benefit from a culture of secrecy, thanks in no small part to the real estate industry’s intense lobbying and donations at every rung of the political ladder. 

“Developers and real estate agents have no legal obligation to conduct customer due diligence on the purchasers of real property,” said Ross Delston, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer and anti-money laundering expert, “other than to abide by the general tenet that a business would want to avoid taking part in a criminal scheme.”

Gil Dezer, who built the Porsche Design Tower, maintains that his firm operates within the law. He cited anti-discrimination laws, including the Fair Housing Act, that his company interpreted as requiring it to sell to a buyer who can sign a contract and send a deposit. It’s an argument some of his fellow developers have also made. But experts in money laundering and housing law challenged this interpretation.

“There’s nothing in the fair housing law that eliminates or reduces the duty to ensure the legitimacy of funds in a transaction,” said Charles Intriago, a former federal prosecutor and anti-money laundering expert. “That’s bullshit.”

The builder

In May 2016, Urdaneta told associates about a “significant deposit” he put down on a unit in Miami. The developer, he said according to the complaint, was pressuring him to close in 60 days.

The condo at the Porsche Design Tower was located on the 22nd floor of the glassy, black cylindrical skyscraper. The property marked the apex of the post-recession luxury condo construction boom in South Florida, and the buyer pool, the building’s marketing materials bragged, included 22 billionaires. Among the owners: Carlos Peralta Quintero, chairman of Grupo IUSA; Igor Yakovlev, a Russian home appliance mogul; and Terry Taylor, America’s biggest car dealer. Prices started at $1,100 a foot, unheard of at the time in Sunny Isles, and Taylor paid $2,600 a foot, or $25 million, for the four-story penthouse.

The tower was geared toward “the wealthy, runners and gunners, the machismos and testosterones,” said Peter Zalewski, a principal with the Miami real estate consultancy Condo Vultures. “That was the niche, that’s who they were hitting.”

That description could easily be used for the developer himself, Dezer: A brash 40-something with a penchant for supercars and shirts with one too many buttons open.

Dezer is the only son of Israeli émigré Michael Dezer, who in the 1970s used proceeds from a junk mail business to amass a Manhattan real estate portfolio. He then expanded out to South Florida, and today the family owns over 27 acres of oceanfront property in Sunny Isles. Dezer joined the family business in the late 1990s while taking night classes at the University of Miami. He found success in establishing licensing agreements with someone he had long admired, Donald Trump, and Dezer Development went on to build six Trump-branded towers. In December 2007, Dezer got married at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, with Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump in attendance.

Like Trump, Dezer’s tastes tend to the extravagant. His personal car collection includes a $1.5 million Bugatti Veyron, and he has a 1950 Porsche Spyder 550 mounted on the wall of his home. He also owns a $17 million silver Gulfstream IV jet, which he showed off on a CNBC segment of “Secret Lives of the Super Rich.” (Still, he was careful to note in a 2016 Bloomberg profile that “we don’t have security guards and things like that. We don’t show it off too much.”)

In 2012, he secured a master licensing agreement with German-based Porsche Design Group. The building would feature a patented car elevator, known as the “Dezervator,” which would allow owners to park their vehicles right next to their residences in so-called “sky garages.”

Gil Dezer discussing the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach in 2015.

In a 2013 interview with The Real Deal, he explained his vision for the tower.“In the downturn,” he said, “we decided we had to do something so unique, so crazy, so outrageous, so incredible, that we’re not going to be looking for a buyer who needs financing, because at that time there was zero financing. We needed people who had a lot of money and who would respect something that was so wow that they’d want to buy it.”

Unlike some other marquee developers, Dezer Development did not tap outside brokerages such as Douglas Elliman or One Sotheby’s International Realty to sell condos. Instead, it relied on its internal sales operation, Dezer Platinum Realty.

“We market, we don’t advertise, and the upper-level marketing I do myself,” Dezer said in that 2013 interview. “With most of these guys, the key is to make them want it and to be willing to part with their money to have it.”

The buyer(s)

Urdaneta, for one, was willing. According to a confidential informant cited by U.S. authorities in the complaint, he and his co-defendants had gamed Venezuela’s unusual currency exchange system to reap large rewards.

Venezuela had a system where the government was able to exchange its currency (bolivars) at a fixed rate for U.S. dollars. But the fixed exchange rate — six bolivars to one dollar — was far more favorable than the actual exchange rate, 60 bolivars to one dollar, opening up a possibility for fraud and abuse.

If someone, for example, was able to exchange $10 million for 600 million bolivars at the actual rate, and then exchange the money at the government’s fixed rate, they would end up with $100 million. In just two transactions, someone could make a $90 million profit by exploiting this difference.

According to the complaint, Urdaneta and his co-defendants pulled off a similar maneuver by bribing officials at PDVSA. One of the alleged money launderers they used, Amparan, also known as Chente, needed to be paid. The unit at the Porsche Design Tower would become his fee.

As the tower neared completion, Urdaneta received an email from Dezer Development that perturbed him. The email included a pre-closing questionnaire, with a caveat that “taking title under a company or trust may trigger FinCEN reporting requirements.”

The Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury, is tasked with looking into crimes including money laundering. In January 2016, just a few months before Unit 2205 was purchased, FinCEN launched its Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) program, which requires title insurance firms to identify the beneficial owners of shell companies seeking to purchase luxury residential real estate in all-cash deals.

“Under the GTOs, the responsibility has been handed to the title insurance companies,” said Andrew Ittleman, an attorney who focuses on white collar defense and money laundering cases. “They have been deputized to address this issue.”

Given Urdaneta’s deep ties to PDVSA, which were the subject of a 2015 U.S. investigation into a $2 billion money laundering scheme, it would make sense that he would not want to buy the unit in his name. So, according to the complaint, he created a company with his wife as a beneficiary and used that to make the $5.3 million purchase. Property records show that his wife was listed as the manager of a Florida company called Paladium Real Estate Group, created in June 2016.

“Dezer Development allows buyers to close on units in the name of a company so long as the individual controlling the company is the same as the person who signed the initial contract,” the developer said in an email to TRD. “We do this to make sure buyers are not flipping.”

In 2013, Dezer had spoken of personally taking charge of the “upper-level marketing” of the building. When asked now about Unit 2205, however, Dezer said: “I was not involved in this sale. I never met the buyer.”

The complaint alleges that Urdaneta then sought to transfer the unit to Amparan. On Sept. 23, 2016, Amparan’s wife was added as a manager of Paladium, and on Sept. 15, 2017, after the closing, Urdaneta’s wife was removed, leaving Amparan effectively in control of Paladium and thus the condo, according to the complaint.

The purchasing entity was set up through a Brickell Avenue law firm, Juris Magister. Calls and emails to the firm were not returned.

“After closing the developer is no longer involved in transfers of that unit,” Dezer said. As of August 2018, 118 of the building’s 132 units have closed, he added. The total projected sellout of the tower, according to a press release from the developer in March 2017, was $840 million.

The Money Laundering Control Act of 1986, which made the practice a federal crime, came during the heyday of Miami’s “cocaine cowboys.” Banks facilitated the money laundering that was essential to the city’s rampant narcotics trade, and the proceeds were pushed through real estate.

Unlike most other cases where money laundering in real estate is alleged, the buyers of Unit 2205 are listed clearly in Miami-Dade County property records instead of being concealed through a labyrinth of opaque offshore or Delaware shell companies such as those documented in the Panama Papers. Property records show Amparan’s wife, Carolina Croquer, as the most recent owner of the property.

Financial institutions are required to flag a transaction to FinCEN following a suspected incident of money laundering or fraud. Real estate brokers, escrow agents and other real estate professionals, however, are not subject to these same rules.

Money laundering experts said that unless Dezer Development was explicitly aware that Urdaneta had purchased the unit for money laundering purposes, the company would not be required to report it.

“The developer is probably technically correct that he has or she has no obligation to report, but that is really kind of weak, particularly in today’s environment,” said John Cassara, a former special agent with the U.S. Treasury who focused on money laundering.

“It strikes me as willful blindness,” Cassara added. “They don’t want to ask questions.”

A FinCEN advisory last July said the bureau encourages brokers, escrow agents and other real estate professionals to “voluntarily report suspicious transactions involving real estate purchases and sales.”

The influence game

One of the reasons real estate brokers are exempt from the same requirements as financial institutions, experts said, is the industry’s successful lobbying efforts.

In total, the National Association of Realtors has spent $27.52 million in lobbying so far in 2018, data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows, ranking second out of 3,669 organizations involved in lobbying. Since 1998, the group has spent nearly $500 million on lobbying, the data shows.

A FinCEN advisory last July said the bureau encourages real estate professionals to “voluntarily report suspicious transactions involving real estate purchases and sales.”

In total, 44 federal lobbying disclosures were filed on anti-money laundering reporting issues in the first quarter of 2018, up from 21 during the same time last year, according to Bloomberg.

“After the passage of USA PATRIOT Act in 2001 it was expected that FinCEN would include real estate agents as one of the businesses subject to the new rules,” said Delston, the D.C-based anti-money laundering expert. “Not only did that not happen, but also real estate agents were expressly exempted from coverage by those rules.”

On top of NAR’s lobbying, real estate developers have gained clout by donating extensively to both local and national politicians, political parties and political action groups. Michael Dezer gave $100,000 to the pro-Trump Make America Great Again political action committee in 2015, along with Seryl Kushner of Kushner Companies. And according to a sworn statement filed in April, North Miami Beach’s then-mayor, George Vallejo, admitted that his wife was on the Dezers’ payroll at the same time that he was voting on issues related to Dezer Development’s proposed projects. Vallejo said he used an LLC to hide payments from the public so that “his wife’s business would not be seen by … all the political enemies,” according to the statement.

Related Group’s Jorge Pérez gave money directly to local candidates, including congressional candidates Matt Haggman and Donna Shalala, as well as $245,000 to Right to Rise USA, a political action committee for Jeb Bush. There’s also Moishe Mana, who has donated to a number of Democratic candidates, including $33,400 in 2016 to the DNC Services Corporation, a PAC that gives money to Democratic candidates.   

Elizabeth Mendenhall, current president of NAR, said in a statement that “real estate professionals understand their responsibilities in the current efforts to combat money laundering, such as filing suspicious activities reports.”

However, Mendenhall added, federal mandates for brokers “already subject to diverse and comprehensive state and local licensing laws across the country would prove burdensome and unnecessary.”

The NAR’s website further states that “any risk-based assessment would likely find very little risk of money laundering involving real estate agents or brokers.”

Local South Florida brokers echoed the point that the responsibility to report transactions under the GTOs should fall on the title insurance industry rather than them.

“The burden is currently in the right place, which is with a company and an industry that understands the reporting guidelines,” said Christina Pappas, district sales manager with the Keyes Company in Coral Gables.

“At the end of the day, our responsibility is to be a consultant to the customer … to help a buyer buy and a seller sell,” she added. “If someone wants to hide something, they are going to be able to hide something.”

Michael Haltman, the president of Hallmark Abstract Service, a New York-based title insurance provider, said his industry is well-suited to report suspicious transactions because title insurance firms are a “third party to the transaction” and “have less of a vested interest in the business.”

However, that distance from the deal also makes it less likely that they have the full picture. “These people [brokers] are salespeople, they are selling a property,” Haltman said. “That’s their job, and that’s what they do, and unless the government says you need to know your client then nothing will change.”

“I would imagine,” he said, “that Realtors talking to a buyer would be in the best position to know what the true intention of the buyer really is.”

An endemic issue

The criminal indictment in the case, filed Aug. 16, lists another 16 South Florida properties as being tied to the defendants. These include a condo at the Related Group’s Icon Brickell, six units in a small Miami Beach apartment complex, four Coral Gables homes and a Wellington equestrian estate with adjacent vacant land. Related declined to comment.

The government defines some of the properties in the indictment as “substitute properties” that it can seize if necessary, but does not allege the properties are connected to any criminal activity. The Porsche Design Tower unit, however, is set to be seized by the government.

Even so, Dezer Development maintained that it was following the letter of the law outlined in the Fair Housing Act and other legislation mandating that a developer sell to a buyer with the ability to sign a contract and send a deposit.

Money laundering experts and fair housing experts however, called this interpretation expedient.

Rigel Oliveri, a University of Missouri professor who studies the Fair Housing Act, said “it prohibits discrimination, [but] it doesn’t say that you have to sell to every person, it doesn’t say you can’t do a background check.”

In response, Dezer said: “What are my other options if I advertise a unit for sale and someone agrees to buy it, writes a contract for the price I am asking and gives me a deposit? What would be a valid reason to turn them down? Because they are from a different country? Because they have different political beliefs? What is an acceptable test?”

from The Real Deal Miami & Real Estate News News | & Curbed Miami - All https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/see-no-evil-how-a-culture-of-secrecy-boosts-south-floridas-condo-market/#new_tab via IFTTT

[juditmiltz]

See no evil: How a culture of secrecy boosts South Florida’s condo market

(Illustration by Adria Fruitos)

A lawyer with ties to Venezuela’s oil ministry, a member of the country’s “boliburguesía” elite and a money launderer sat around a Caracas office table while armed guards and a German shepherd with a shock collar stood watch.

The boliburgués placed his handgun on the table. It was November 2015, and the three Venezuelans were pressuring an unnamed associate to persist with a scheme that U.S. authorities would later allege embezzled $1.2 billion from the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA. Much of that money, according to a criminal complaint, ended up in South Florida real estate.

Among those reportedly alleged to be connected to the scheme: the three stepsons of the country’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro; a billionaire Venezuelan TV mogul; and former executives at PDVSA. Eight people have been charged in the case so far, while one defendant — a wealth manager at a Swiss bank — was arrested in August.

With a federal investigation ongoing, the U.S. attorney’s office could seize at least 16 South Florida properties tied to the defendants. But in the initial complaint filed in July 2018, only one was explicitly named: Unit 2205 at the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles. Federal officials allege this condo was ultimately transferred by Carmelo Urdaneta Aqui, who until 2015 was legal counsel to the Venezuelan oil ministry, to the alleged money launderer, José Vicente Amparan Croquer, as payment for services rendered.

Luxury real estate in South Florida has long served as a magnet for wealth from South America. The continent’s tycoons, celebrities, athletes and assorted hustlers have seen it both as a playground and a bank — a good place to invest or park cash, given its proximity, culture, weather and, most of all, its discretion: The provenance of the wealth has historically mattered little to Miami-area developers and brokers. What’s mattered is that their buyers have it.

But even though today’s tougher anti-money laundering laws impose stricter disclosure requirements on banks and lenders involved in real estate purchases, those who build product and those who sell for them can continue to benefit from a culture of secrecy, thanks in no small part to the real estate industry’s intense lobbying and donations at every rung of the political ladder. 

“Developers and real estate agents have no legal obligation to conduct customer due diligence on the purchasers of real property,” said Ross Delston, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer and anti-money laundering expert, “other than to abide by the general tenet that a business would want to avoid taking part in a criminal scheme.”

Gil Dezer, who built the Porsche Design Tower, maintains that his firm operates within the law. He cited anti-discrimination laws, including the Fair Housing Act, that his company interpreted as requiring it to sell to a buyer who can sign a contract and send a deposit. It’s an argument some of his fellow developers have also made. But experts in money laundering and housing law challenged this interpretation.

“There’s nothing in the fair housing law that eliminates or reduces the duty to ensure the legitimacy of funds in a transaction,” said Charles Intriago, a former federal prosecutor and anti-money laundering expert. “That’s bullshit.”

The builder

In May 2016, Urdaneta told associates about a “significant deposit” he put down on a unit in Miami. The developer, he said according to the complaint, was pressuring him to close in 60 days.

The condo at the Porsche Design Tower was located on the 22nd floor of the glassy, black cylindrical skyscraper. The property marked the apex of the post-recession luxury condo construction boom in South Florida, and the buyer pool, the building’s marketing materials bragged, included 22 billionaires. Among the owners: Carlos Peralta Quintero, chairman of Grupo IUSA; Igor Yakovlev, a Russian home appliance mogul; and Terry Taylor, America’s biggest car dealer. Prices started at $1,100 a foot, unheard of at the time in Sunny Isles, and Taylor paid $2,600 a foot, or $25 million, for the four-story penthouse.

The tower was geared toward “the wealthy, runners and gunners, the machismos and testosterones,” said Peter Zalewski, a principal with the Miami real estate consultancy Condo Vultures. “That was the niche, that’s who they were hitting.”

That description could easily be used for the developer himself, Dezer: A brash 40-something with a penchant for supercars and shirts with one too many buttons open.

Dezer is the only son of Israeli émigré Michael Dezer, who in the 1970s used proceeds from a junk mail business to amass a Manhattan real estate portfolio. He then expanded out to South Florida, and today the family owns over 27 acres of oceanfront property in Sunny Isles. Dezer joined the family business in the late 1990s while taking night classes at the University of Miami. He found success in establishing licensing agreements with someone he had long admired, Donald Trump, and Dezer Development went on to build six Trump-branded towers. In December 2007, Dezer got married at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, with Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump in attendance.

Like Trump, Dezer’s tastes tend to the extravagant. His personal car collection includes a $1.5 million Bugatti Veyron, and he has a 1950 Porsche Spyder 550 mounted on the wall of his home. He also owns a $17 million silver Gulfstream IV jet, which he showed off on a CNBC segment of “Secret Lives of the Super Rich.” (Still, he was careful to note in a 2016 Bloomberg profile that “we don’t have security guards and things like that. We don’t show it off too much.”)

In 2012, he secured a master licensing agreement with German-based Porsche Design Group. The building would feature a patented car elevator, known as the “Dezervator,” which would allow owners to park their vehicles right next to their residences in so-called “sky garages.”

Gil Dezer discussing the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach in 2015.

In a 2013 interview with The Real Deal, he explained his vision for the tower.“In the downturn,” he said, “we decided we had to do something so unique, so crazy, so outrageous, so incredible, that we’re not going to be looking for a buyer who needs financing, because at that time there was zero financing. We needed people who had a lot of money and who would respect something that was so wow that they’d want to buy it.”

Unlike some other marquee developers, Dezer Development did not tap outside brokerages such as Douglas Elliman or One Sotheby’s International Realty to sell condos. Instead, it relied on its internal sales operation, Dezer Platinum Realty.

“We market, we don’t advertise, and the upper-level marketing I do myself,” Dezer said in that 2013 interview. “With most of these guys, the key is to make them want it and to be willing to part with their money to have it.”

The buyer(s)

Urdaneta, for one, was willing. According to a confidential informant cited by U.S. authorities in the complaint, he and his co-defendants had gamed Venezuela’s unusual currency exchange system to reap large rewards.

Venezuela had a system where the government was able to exchange its currency (bolivars) at a fixed rate for U.S. dollars. But the fixed exchange rate — six bolivars to one dollar — was far more favorable than the actual exchange rate, 60 bolivars to one dollar, opening up a possibility for fraud and abuse.

If someone, for example, was able to exchange $10 million for 600 million bolivars at the actual rate, and then exchange the money at the government’s fixed rate, they would end up with $100 million. In just two transactions, someone could make a $90 million profit by exploiting this difference.

According to the complaint, Urdaneta and his co-defendants pulled off a similar maneuver by bribing officials at PDVSA. One of the alleged money launderers they used, Amparan, also known as Chente, needed to be paid. The unit at the Porsche Design Tower would become his fee.

As the tower neared completion, Urdaneta received an email from Dezer Development that perturbed him. The email included a pre-closing questionnaire, with a caveat that “taking title under a company or trust may trigger FinCEN reporting requirements.”

The Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury, is tasked with looking into crimes including money laundering. In January 2016, just a few months before Unit 2205 was purchased, FinCEN launched its Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) program, which requires title insurance firms to identify the beneficial owners of shell companies seeking to purchase luxury residential real estate in all-cash deals.

“Under the GTOs, the responsibility has been handed to the title insurance companies,” said Andrew Ittleman, an attorney who focuses on white collar defense and money laundering cases. “They have been deputized to address this issue.”

Given Urdaneta’s deep ties to PDVSA, which were the subject of a 2015 U.S. investigation into a $2 billion money laundering scheme, it would make sense that he would not want to buy the unit in his name. So, according to the complaint, he created a company with his wife as a beneficiary and used that to make the $5.3 million purchase. Property records show that his wife was listed as the manager of a Florida company called Paladium Real Estate Group, created in June 2016.

“Dezer Development allows buyers to close on units in the name of a company so long as the individual controlling the company is the same as the person who signed the initial contract,” the developer said in an email to TRD. “We do this to make sure buyers are not flipping.”

In 2013, Dezer had spoken of personally taking charge of the “upper-level marketing” of the building. When asked now about Unit 2205, however, Dezer said: “I was not involved in this sale. I never met the buyer.”

The complaint alleges that Urdaneta then sought to transfer the unit to Amparan. On Sept. 23, 2016, Amparan’s wife was added as a manager of Paladium, and on Sept. 15, 2017, after the closing, Urdaneta’s wife was removed, leaving Amparan effectively in control of Paladium and thus the condo, according to the complaint.

The purchasing entity was set up through a Brickell Avenue law firm, Juris Magister. Calls and emails to the firm were not returned.

“After closing the developer is no longer involved in transfers of that unit,” Dezer said. As of August 2018, 118 of the building’s 132 units have closed, he added. The total projected sellout of the tower, according to a press release from the developer in March 2017, was $840 million.

The Money Laundering Control Act of 1986, which made the practice a federal crime, came during the heyday of Miami’s “cocaine cowboys.” Banks facilitated the money laundering that was essential to the city’s rampant narcotics trade, and the proceeds were pushed through real estate.

Unlike most other cases where money laundering in real estate is alleged, the buyers of Unit 2205 are listed clearly in Miami-Dade County property records instead of being concealed through a labyrinth of opaque offshore or Delaware shell companies such as those documented in the Panama Papers. Property records show Amparan’s wife, Carolina Croquer, as the most recent owner of the property.

Financial institutions are required to flag a transaction to FinCEN following a suspected incident of money laundering or fraud. Real estate brokers, escrow agents and other real estate professionals, however, are not subject to these same rules.

Money laundering experts said that unless Dezer Development was explicitly aware that Urdaneta had purchased the unit for money laundering purposes, the company would not be required to report it.

“The developer is probably technically correct that he has or she has no obligation to report, but that is really kind of weak, particularly in today’s environment,” said John Cassara, a former special agent with the U.S. Treasury who focused on money laundering.

“It strikes me as willful blindness,” Cassara added. “They don’t want to ask questions.”

A FinCEN advisory last July said the bureau encourages brokers, escrow agents and other real estate professionals to “voluntarily report suspicious transactions involving real estate purchases and sales.”

The influence game

One of the reasons real estate brokers are exempt from the same requirements as financial institutions, experts said, is the industry’s successful lobbying efforts.

In total, the National Association of Realtors has spent $27.52 million in lobbying so far in 2018, data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows, ranking second out of 3,669 organizations involved in lobbying. Since 1998, the group has spent nearly $500 million on lobbying, the data shows.

A FinCEN advisory last July said the bureau encourages real estate professionals to “voluntarily report suspicious transactions involving real estate purchases and sales.”

In total, 44 federal lobbying disclosures were filed on anti-money laundering reporting issues in the first quarter of 2018, up from 21 during the same time last year, according to Bloomberg.

“After the passage of USA PATRIOT Act in 2001 it was expected that FinCEN would include real estate agents as one of the businesses subject to the new rules,” said Delston, the D.C-based anti-money laundering expert. “Not only did that not happen, but also real estate agents were expressly exempted from coverage by those rules.”

On top of NAR’s lobbying, real estate developers have gained clout by donating extensively to both local and national politicians, political parties and political action groups. Michael Dezer gave $100,000 to the pro-Trump Make America Great Again political action committee in 2015, along with Seryl Kushner of Kushner Companies. And according to a sworn statement filed in April, North Miami Beach’s then-mayor, George Vallejo, admitted that his wife was on the Dezers’ payroll at the same time that he was voting on issues related to Dezer Development’s proposed projects. Vallejo said he used an LLC to hide payments from the public so that “his wife’s business would not be seen by … all the political enemies,” according to the statement.

Related Group’s Jorge Pérez gave money directly to local candidates, including congressional candidates Matt Haggman and Donna Shalala, as well as $245,000 to Right to Rise USA, a political action committee for Jeb Bush. There’s also Moishe Mana, who has donated to a number of Democratic candidates, including $33,400 in 2016 to the DNC Services Corporation, a PAC that gives money to Democratic candidates.   

Elizabeth Mendenhall, current president of NAR, said in a statement that “real estate professionals understand their responsibilities in the current efforts to combat money laundering, such as filing suspicious activities reports.”

However, Mendenhall added, federal mandates for brokers “already subject to diverse and comprehensive state and local licensing laws across the country would prove burdensome and unnecessary.”

The NAR’s website further states that “any risk-based assessment would likely find very little risk of money laundering involving real estate agents or brokers.”

Local South Florida brokers echoed the point that the responsibility to report transactions under the GTOs should fall on the title insurance industry rather than them.

“The burden is currently in the right place, which is with a company and an industry that understands the reporting guidelines,” said Christina Pappas, district sales manager with the Keyes Company in Coral Gables.

“At the end of the day, our responsibility is to be a consultant to the customer … to help a buyer buy and a seller sell,” she added. “If someone wants to hide something, they are going to be able to hide something.”

Michael Haltman, the president of Hallmark Abstract Service, a New York-based title insurance provider, said his industry is well-suited to report suspicious transactions because title insurance firms are a “third party to the transaction” and “have less of a vested interest in the business.”

However, that distance from the deal also makes it less likely that they have the full picture. “These people [brokers] are salespeople, they are selling a property,” Haltman said. “That’s their job, and that’s what they do, and unless the government says you need to know your client then nothing will change.”

“I would imagine,” he said, “that Realtors talking to a buyer would be in the best position to know what the true intention of the buyer really is.”

An endemic issue

The criminal indictment in the case, filed Aug. 16, lists another 16 South Florida properties as being tied to the defendants. These include a condo at the Related Group’s Icon Brickell, six units in a small Miami Beach apartment complex, four Coral Gables homes and a Wellington equestrian estate with adjacent vacant land. Related declined to comment.

The government defines some of the properties in the indictment as “substitute properties” that it can seize if necessary, but does not allege the properties are connected to any criminal activity. The Porsche Design Tower unit, however, is set to be seized by the government.

Even so, Dezer Development maintained that it was following the letter of the law outlined in the Fair Housing Act and other legislation mandating that a developer sell to a buyer with the ability to sign a contract and send a deposit.

Money laundering experts and fair housing experts however, called this interpretation expedient.

Rigel Oliveri, a University of Missouri professor who studies the Fair Housing Act, said “it prohibits discrimination, [but] it doesn’t say that you have to sell to every person, it doesn’t say you can’t do a background check.”

In response, Dezer said: “What are my other options if I advertise a unit for sale and someone agrees to buy it, writes a contract for the price I am asking and gives me a deposit? What would be a valid reason to turn them down? Because they are from a different country? Because they have different political beliefs? What is an acceptable test?”

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/see-no-evil-how-a-culture-of-secrecy-boosts-south-floridas-condo-market/#new_tab via IFTTT

[walterfrodriguez]

See no evil: How a culture of secrecy boosts South Florida’s condo market

(Illustration by Adria Fruitos)

A lawyer with ties to Venezuela’s oil ministry, a member of the country’s “boliburguesía” elite and a money launderer sat around a Caracas office table while armed guards and a German shepherd with a shock collar stood watch.

The boliburgués placed his handgun on the table. It was November 2015, and the three Venezuelans were pressuring an unnamed associate to persist with a scheme that U.S. authorities would later allege embezzled $1.2 billion from the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA. Much of that money, according to a criminal complaint, ended up in South Florida real estate.

Among those reportedly alleged to be connected to the scheme: the three stepsons of the country’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro; a billionaire Venezuelan TV mogul; and former executives at PDVSA. Eight people have been charged in the case so far, while one defendant — a wealth manager at a Swiss bank — was arrested in August.

With a federal investigation ongoing, the U.S. attorney’s office could seize at least 16 South Florida properties tied to the defendants. But in the initial complaint filed in July 2018, only one was explicitly named: Unit 2205 at the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles. Federal officials allege this condo was ultimately transferred by Carmelo Urdaneta Aqui, who until 2015 was legal counsel to the Venezuelan oil ministry, to the alleged money launderer, José Vicente Amparan Croquer, as payment for services rendered.

Luxury real estate in South Florida has long served as a magnet for wealth from South America. The continent’s tycoons, celebrities, athletes and assorted hustlers have seen it both as a playground and a bank — a good place to invest or park cash, given its proximity, culture, weather and, most of all, its discretion: The provenance of the wealth has historically mattered little to Miami-area developers and brokers. What’s mattered is that their buyers have it.

But even though today’s tougher anti-money laundering laws impose stricter disclosure requirements on banks and lenders involved in real estate purchases, those who build product and those who sell for them can continue to benefit from a culture of secrecy, thanks in no small part to the real estate industry’s intense lobbying and donations at every rung of the political ladder. 

“Developers and real estate agents have no legal obligation to conduct customer due diligence on the purchasers of real property,” said Ross Delston, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer and anti-money laundering expert, “other than to abide by the general tenet that a business would want to avoid taking part in a criminal scheme.”

Gil Dezer, who built the Porsche Design Tower, maintains that his firm operates within the law. He cited anti-discrimination laws, including the Fair Housing Act, that his company interpreted as requiring it to sell to a buyer who can sign a contract and send a deposit. It’s an argument some of his fellow developers have also made. But experts in money laundering and housing law challenged this interpretation.

“There’s nothing in the fair housing law that eliminates or reduces the duty to ensure the legitimacy of funds in a transaction,” said Charles Intriago, a former federal prosecutor and anti-money laundering expert. “That’s bullshit.”

The builder

In May 2016, Urdaneta told associates about a “significant deposit” he put down on a unit in Miami. The developer, he said according to the complaint, was pressuring him to close in 60 days.

The condo at the Porsche Design Tower was located on the 22nd floor of the glassy, black cylindrical skyscraper. The property marked the apex of the post-recession luxury condo construction boom in South Florida, and the buyer pool, the building’s marketing materials bragged, included 22 billionaires. Among the owners: Carlos Peralta Quintero, chairman of Grupo IUSA; Igor Yakovlev, a Russian home appliance mogul; and Terry Taylor, America’s biggest car dealer. Prices started at $1,100 a foot, unheard of at the time in Sunny Isles, and Taylor paid $2,600 a foot, or $25 million, for the four-story penthouse.

The tower was geared toward “the wealthy, runners and gunners, the machismos and testosterones,” said Peter Zalewski, a principal with the Miami real estate consultancy Condo Vultures. “That was the niche, that’s who they were hitting.”

That description could easily be used for the developer himself, Dezer: A brash 40-something with a penchant for supercars and shirts with one too many buttons open.

Dezer is the only son of Israeli émigré Michael Dezer, who in the 1970s used proceeds from a junk mail business to amass a Manhattan real estate portfolio. He then expanded out to South Florida, and today the family owns over 27 acres of oceanfront property in Sunny Isles. Dezer joined the family business in the late 1990s while taking night classes at the University of Miami. He found success in establishing licensing agreements with someone he had long admired, Donald Trump, and Dezer Development went on to build six Trump-branded towers. In December 2007, Dezer got married at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, with Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump in attendance.

Like Trump, Dezer’s tastes tend to the extravagant. His personal car collection includes a $1.5 million Bugatti Veyron, and he has a 1950 Porsche Spyder 550 mounted on the wall of his home. He also owns a $17 million silver Gulfstream IV jet, which he showed off on a CNBC segment of “Secret Lives of the Super Rich.” (Still, he was careful to note in a 2016 Bloomberg profile that “we don’t have security guards and things like that. We don’t show it off too much.”)

In 2012, he secured a master licensing agreement with German-based Porsche Design Group. The building would feature a patented car elevator, known as the “Dezervator,” which would allow owners to park their vehicles right next to their residences in so-called “sky garages.”

Gil Dezer discussing the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach in 2015.

In a 2013 interview with The Real Deal, he explained his vision for the tower.“In the downturn,” he said, “we decided we had to do something so unique, so crazy, so outrageous, so incredible, that we’re not going to be looking for a buyer who needs financing, because at that time there was zero financing. We needed people who had a lot of money and who would respect something that was so wow that they’d want to buy it.”

Unlike some other marquee developers, Dezer Development did not tap outside brokerages such as Douglas Elliman or One Sotheby’s International Realty to sell condos. Instead, it relied on its internal sales operation, Dezer Platinum Realty.

“We market, we don’t advertise, and the upper-level marketing I do myself,” Dezer said in that 2013 interview. “With most of these guys, the key is to make them want it and to be willing to part with their money to have it.”

The buyer(s)

Urdaneta, for one, was willing. According to a confidential informant cited by U.S. authorities in the complaint, he and his co-defendants had gamed Venezuela’s unusual currency exchange system to reap large rewards.

Venezuela had a system where the government was able to exchange its currency (bolivars) at a fixed rate for U.S. dollars. But the fixed exchange rate — six bolivars to one dollar — was far more favorable than the actual exchange rate, 60 bolivars to one dollar, opening up a possibility for fraud and abuse.

If someone, for example, was able to exchange $10 million for 600 million bolivars at the actual rate, and then exchange the money at the government’s fixed rate, they would end up with $100 million. In just two transactions, someone could make a $90 million profit by exploiting this difference.

According to the complaint, Urdaneta and his co-defendants pulled off a similar maneuver by bribing officials at PDVSA. One of the alleged money launderers they used, Amparan, also known as Chente, needed to be paid. The unit at the Porsche Design Tower would become his fee.

As the tower neared completion, Urdaneta received an email from Dezer Development that perturbed him. The email included a pre-closing questionnaire, with a caveat that “taking title under a company or trust may trigger FinCEN reporting requirements.”

The Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury, is tasked with looking into crimes including money laundering. In January 2016, just a few months before Unit 2205 was purchased, FinCEN launched its Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) program, which requires title insurance firms to identify the beneficial owners of shell companies seeking to purchase luxury residential real estate in all-cash deals.

“Under the GTOs, the responsibility has been handed to the title insurance companies,” said Andrew Ittleman, an attorney who focuses on white collar defense and money laundering cases. “They have been deputized to address this issue.”

Given Urdaneta’s deep ties to PDVSA, which were the subject of a 2015 U.S. investigation into a $2 billion money laundering scheme, it would make sense that he would not want to buy the unit in his name. So, according to the complaint, he created a company with his wife as a beneficiary and used that to make the $5.3 million purchase. Property records show that his wife was listed as the manager of a Florida company called Paladium Real Estate Group, created in June 2016.

“Dezer Development allows buyers to close on units in the name of a company so long as the individual controlling the company is the same as the person who signed the initial contract,” the developer said in an email to TRD. “We do this to make sure buyers are not flipping.”

In 2013, Dezer had spoken of personally taking charge of the “upper-level marketing” of the building. When asked now about Unit 2205, however, Dezer said: “I was not involved in this sale. I never met the buyer.”

The complaint alleges that Urdaneta then sought to transfer the unit to Amparan. On Sept. 23, 2016, Amparan’s wife was added as a manager of Paladium, and on Sept. 15, 2017, after the closing, Urdaneta’s wife was removed, leaving Amparan effectively in control of Paladium and thus the condo, according to the complaint.

The purchasing entity was set up through a Brickell Avenue law firm, Juris Magister. Calls and emails to the firm were not returned.

“After closing the developer is no longer involved in transfers of that unit,” Dezer said. As of August 2018, 118 of the building’s 132 units have closed, he added. The total projected sellout of the tower, according to a press release from the developer in March 2017, was $840 million.

The Money Laundering Control Act of 1986, which made the practice a federal crime, came during the heyday of Miami’s “cocaine cowboys.” Banks facilitated the money laundering that was essential to the city’s rampant narcotics trade, and the proceeds were pushed through real estate.

Unlike most other cases where money laundering in real estate is alleged, the buyers of Unit 2205 are listed clearly in Miami-Dade County property records instead of being concealed through a labyrinth of opaque offshore or Delaware shell companies such as those documented in the Panama Papers. Property records show Amparan’s wife, Carolina Croquer, as the most recent owner of the property.

Financial institutions are required to flag a transaction to FinCEN following a suspected incident of money laundering or fraud. Real estate brokers, escrow agents and other real estate professionals, however, are not subject to these same rules.

Money laundering experts said that unless Dezer Development was explicitly aware that Urdaneta had purchased the unit for money laundering purposes, the company would not be required to report it.

“The developer is probably technically correct that he has or she has no obligation to report, but that is really kind of weak, particularly in today’s environment,” said John Cassara, a former special agent with the U.S. Treasury who focused on money laundering.

“It strikes me as willful blindness,” Cassara added. “They don’t want to ask questions.”

A FinCEN advisory last July said the bureau encourages brokers, escrow agents and other real estate professionals to “voluntarily report suspicious transactions involving real estate purchases and sales.”

The influence game

One of the reasons real estate brokers are exempt from the same requirements as financial institutions, experts said, is the industry’s successful lobbying efforts.

In total, the National Association of Realtors has spent $27.52 million in lobbying so far in 2018, data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows, ranking second out of 3,669 organizations involved in lobbying. Since 1998, the group has spent nearly $500 million on lobbying, the data shows.

A FinCEN advisory last July said the bureau encourages real estate professionals to “voluntarily report suspicious transactions involving real estate purchases and sales.”

In total, 44 federal lobbying disclosures were filed on anti-money laundering reporting issues in the first quarter of 2018, up from 21 during the same time last year, according to Bloomberg.

“After the passage of USA PATRIOT Act in 2001 it was expected that FinCEN would include real estate agents as one of the businesses subject to the new rules,” said Delston, the D.C-based anti-money laundering expert. “Not only did that not happen, but also real estate agents were expressly exempted from coverage by those rules.”

On top of NAR’s lobbying, real estate developers have gained clout by donating extensively to both local and national politicians, political parties and political action groups. Michael Dezer gave $100,000 to the pro-Trump Make America Great Again political action committee in 2015, along with Seryl Kushner of Kushner Companies. And according to a sworn statement filed in April, North Miami Beach’s then-mayor, George Vallejo, admitted that his wife was on the Dezers’ payroll at the same time that he was voting on issues related to Dezer Development’s proposed projects. Vallejo said he used an LLC to hide payments from the public so that “his wife’s business would not be seen by … all the political enemies,” according to the statement.

Related Group’s Jorge Pérez gave money directly to local candidates, including congressional candidates Matt Haggman and Donna Shalala, as well as $245,000 to Right to Rise USA, a political action committee for Jeb Bush. There’s also Moishe Mana, who has donated to a number of Democratic candidates, including $33,400 in 2016 to the DNC Services Corporation, a PAC that gives money to Democratic candidates.   

Elizabeth Mendenhall, current president of NAR, said in a statement that “real estate professionals understand their responsibilities in the current efforts to combat money laundering, such as filing suspicious activities reports.”

However, Mendenhall added, federal mandates for brokers “already subject to diverse and comprehensive state and local licensing laws across the country would prove burdensome and unnecessary.”

The NAR’s website further states that “any risk-based assessment would likely find very little risk of money laundering involving real estate agents or brokers.”

Local South Florida brokers echoed the point that the responsibility to report transactions under the GTOs should fall on the title insurance industry rather than them.

“The burden is currently in the right place, which is with a company and an industry that understands the reporting guidelines,” said Christina Pappas, district sales manager with the Keyes Company in Coral Gables.

“At the end of the day, our responsibility is to be a consultant to the customer … to help a buyer buy and a seller sell,” she added. “If someone wants to hide something, they are going to be able to hide something.”

Michael Haltman, the president of Hallmark Abstract Service, a New York-based title insurance provider, said his industry is well-suited to report suspicious transactions because title insurance firms are a “third party to the transaction” and “have less of a vested interest in the business.”

However, that distance from the deal also makes it less likely that they have the full picture. “These people [brokers] are salespeople, they are selling a property,” Haltman said. “That’s their job, and that’s what they do, and unless the government says you need to know your client then nothing will change.”

“I would imagine,” he said, “that Realtors talking to a buyer would be in the best position to know what the true intention of the buyer really is.”

An endemic issue

The criminal indictment in the case, filed Aug. 16, lists another 16 South Florida properties as being tied to the defendants. These include a condo at the Related Group’s Icon Brickell, six units in a small Miami Beach apartment complex, four Coral Gables homes and a Wellington equestrian estate with adjacent vacant land. Related declined to comment.

The government defines some of the properties in the indictment as “substitute properties” that it can seize if necessary, but does not allege the properties are connected to any criminal activity. The Porsche Design Tower unit, however, is set to be seized by the government.

Even so, Dezer Development maintained that it was following the letter of the law outlined in the Fair Housing Act and other legislation mandating that a developer sell to a buyer with the ability to sign a contract and send a deposit.

Money laundering experts and fair housing experts however, called this interpretation expedient.

Rigel Oliveri, a University of Missouri professor who studies the Fair Housing Act, said “it prohibits discrimination, [but] it doesn’t say that you have to sell to every person, it doesn’t say you can’t do a background check.”

In response, Dezer said: “What are my other options if I advertise a unit for sale and someone agrees to buy it, writes a contract for the price I am asking and gives me a deposit? What would be a valid reason to turn them down? Because they are from a different country? Because they have different political beliefs? What is an acceptable test?”

from The Real Deal Miami & Real Estate News News | & Curbed Miami - All https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/see-no-evil-how-a-culture-of-secrecy-boosts-south-floridas-condo-market/#new_tab via IFTTT

[walterfrodriguez]

See no evil: How a culture of secrecy boosts South Florida’s condo market

(Illustration by Adria Fruitos)

A lawyer with ties to Venezuela’s oil ministry, a member of the country’s “boliburguesía” elite and a money launderer sat around a Caracas office table while armed guards and a German shepherd with a shock collar stood watch.

The boliburgués placed his handgun on the table. It was November 2015, and the three Venezuelans were pressuring an unnamed associate to persist with a scheme that U.S. authorities would later allege embezzled $1.2 billion from the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA. Much of that money, according to a criminal complaint, ended up in South Florida real estate.

Among those reportedly alleged to be connected to the scheme: the three stepsons of the country’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro; a billionaire Venezuelan TV mogul; and former executives at PDVSA. Eight people have been charged in the case so far, while one defendant — a wealth manager at a Swiss bank — was arrested in August.

With a federal investigation ongoing, the U.S. attorney’s office could seize at least 16 South Florida properties tied to the defendants. But in the initial complaint filed in July 2018, only one was explicitly named: Unit 2205 at the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles. Federal officials allege this condo was ultimately transferred by Carmelo Urdaneta Aqui, who until 2015 was legal counsel to the Venezuelan oil ministry, to the alleged money launderer, José Vicente Amparan Croquer, as payment for services rendered.

Luxury real estate in South Florida has long served as a magnet for wealth from South America. The continent’s tycoons, celebrities, athletes and assorted hustlers have seen it both as a playground and a bank — a good place to invest or park cash, given its proximity, culture, weather and, most of all, its discretion: The provenance of the wealth has historically mattered little to Miami-area developers and brokers. What’s mattered is that their buyers have it.

But even though today’s tougher anti-money laundering laws impose stricter disclosure requirements on banks and lenders involved in real estate purchases, those who build product and those who sell for them can continue to benefit from a culture of secrecy, thanks in no small part to the real estate industry’s intense lobbying and donations at every rung of the political ladder. 

“Developers and real estate agents have no legal obligation to conduct customer due diligence on the purchasers of real property,” said Ross Delston, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer and anti-money laundering expert, “other than to abide by the general tenet that a business would want to avoid taking part in a criminal scheme.”

Gil Dezer, who built the Porsche Design Tower, maintains that his firm operates within the law. He cited anti-discrimination laws, including the Fair Housing Act, that his company interpreted as requiring it to sell to a buyer who can sign a contract and send a deposit. It’s an argument some of his fellow developers have also made. But experts in money laundering and housing law challenged this interpretation.

“There’s nothing in the fair housing law that eliminates or reduces the duty to ensure the legitimacy of funds in a transaction,” said Charles Intriago, a former federal prosecutor and anti-money laundering expert. “That’s bullshit.”

The builder

In May 2016, Urdaneta told associates about a “significant deposit” he put down on a unit in Miami. The developer, he said according to the complaint, was pressuring him to close in 60 days.

The condo at the Porsche Design Tower was located on the 22nd floor of the glassy, black cylindrical skyscraper. The property marked the apex of the post-recession luxury condo construction boom in South Florida, and the buyer pool, the building’s marketing materials bragged, included 22 billionaires. Among the owners: Carlos Peralta Quintero, chairman of Grupo IUSA; Igor Yakovlev, a Russian home appliance mogul; and Terry Taylor, America’s biggest car dealer. Prices started at $1,100 a foot, unheard of at the time in Sunny Isles, and Taylor paid $2,600 a foot, or $25 million, for the four-story penthouse.

The tower was geared toward “the wealthy, runners and gunners, the machismos and testosterones,” said Peter Zalewski, a principal with the Miami real estate consultancy Condo Vultures. “That was the niche, that’s who they were hitting.”

That description could easily be used for the developer himself, Dezer: A brash 40-something with a penchant for supercars and shirts with one too many buttons open.

Dezer is the only son of Israeli émigré Michael Dezer, who in the 1970s used proceeds from a junk mail business to amass a Manhattan real estate portfolio. He then expanded out to South Florida, and today the family owns over 27 acres of oceanfront property in Sunny Isles. Dezer joined the family business in the late 1990s while taking night classes at the University of Miami. He found success in establishing licensing agreements with someone he had long admired, Donald Trump, and Dezer Development went on to build six Trump-branded towers. In December 2007, Dezer got married at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, with Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump in attendance.

Like Trump, Dezer’s tastes tend to the extravagant. His personal car collection includes a $1.5 million Bugatti Veyron, and he has a 1950 Porsche Spyder 550 mounted on the wall of his home. He also owns a $17 million silver Gulfstream IV jet, which he showed off on a CNBC segment of “Secret Lives of the Super Rich.” (Still, he was careful to note in a 2016 Bloomberg profile that “we don’t have security guards and things like that. We don’t show it off too much.”)

In 2012, he secured a master licensing agreement with German-based Porsche Design Group. The building would feature a patented car elevator, known as the “Dezervator,” which would allow owners to park their vehicles right next to their residences in so-called “sky garages.”

Gil Dezer discussing the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach in 2015.

In a 2013 interview with The Real Deal, he explained his vision for the tower.“In the downturn,” he said, “we decided we had to do something so unique, so crazy, so outrageous, so incredible, that we’re not going to be looking for a buyer who needs financing, because at that time there was zero financing. We needed people who had a lot of money and who would respect something that was so wow that they’d want to buy it.”

Unlike some other marquee developers, Dezer Development did not tap outside brokerages such as Douglas Elliman or One Sotheby’s International Realty to sell condos. Instead, it relied on its internal sales operation, Dezer Platinum Realty.

“We market, we don’t advertise, and the upper-level marketing I do myself,” Dezer said in that 2013 interview. “With most of these guys, the key is to make them want it and to be willing to part with their money to have it.”

The buyer(s)

Urdaneta, for one, was willing. According to a confidential informant cited by U.S. authorities in the complaint, he and his co-defendants had gamed Venezuela’s unusual currency exchange system to reap large rewards.

Venezuela had a system where the government was able to exchange its currency (bolivars) at a fixed rate for U.S. dollars. But the fixed exchange rate — six bolivars to one dollar — was far more favorable than the actual exchange rate, 60 bolivars to one dollar, opening up a possibility for fraud and abuse.

If someone, for example, was able to exchange $10 million for 600 million bolivars at the actual rate, and then exchange the money at the government’s fixed rate, they would end up with $100 million. In just two transactions, someone could make a $90 million profit by exploiting this difference.

According to the complaint, Urdaneta and his co-defendants pulled off a similar maneuver by bribing officials at PDVSA. One of the alleged money launderers they used, Amparan, also known as Chente, needed to be paid. The unit at the Porsche Design Tower would become his fee.

As the tower neared completion, Urdaneta received an email from Dezer Development that perturbed him. The email included a pre-closing questionnaire, with a caveat that “taking title under a company or trust may trigger FinCEN reporting requirements.”

The Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury, is tasked with looking into crimes including money laundering. In January 2016, just a few months before Unit 2205 was purchased, FinCEN launched its Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) program, which requires title insurance firms to identify the beneficial owners of shell companies seeking to purchase luxury residential real estate in all-cash deals.

“Under the GTOs, the responsibility has been handed to the title insurance companies,” said Andrew Ittleman, an attorney who focuses on white collar defense and money laundering cases. “They have been deputized to address this issue.”

Given Urdaneta’s deep ties to PDVSA, which were the subject of a 2015 U.S. investigation into a $2 billion money laundering scheme, it would make sense that he would not want to buy the unit in his name. So, according to the complaint, he created a company with his wife as a beneficiary and used that to make the $5.3 million purchase. Property records show that his wife was listed as the manager of a Florida company called Paladium Real Estate Group, created in June 2016.

“Dezer Development allows buyers to close on units in the name of a company so long as the individual controlling the company is the same as the person who signed the initial contract,” the developer said in an email to TRD. “We do this to make sure buyers are not flipping.”

In 2013, Dezer had spoken of personally taking charge of the “upper-level marketing” of the building. When asked now about Unit 2205, however, Dezer said: “I was not involved in this sale. I never met the buyer.”

The complaint alleges that Urdaneta then sought to transfer the unit to Amparan. On Sept. 23, 2016, Amparan’s wife was added as a manager of Paladium, and on Sept. 15, 2017, after the closing, Urdaneta’s wife was removed, leaving Amparan effectively in control of Paladium and thus the condo, according to the complaint.

The purchasing entity was set up through a Brickell Avenue law firm, Juris Magister. Calls and emails to the firm were not returned.

“After closing the developer is no longer involved in transfers of that unit,” Dezer said. As of August 2018, 118 of the building’s 132 units have closed, he added. The total projected sellout of the tower, according to a press release from the developer in March 2017, was $840 million.

The Money Laundering Control Act of 1986, which made the practice a federal crime, came during the heyday of Miami’s “cocaine cowboys.” Banks facilitated the money laundering that was essential to the city’s rampant narcotics trade, and the proceeds were pushed through real estate.

Unlike most other cases where money laundering in real estate is alleged, the buyers of Unit 2205 are listed clearly in Miami-Dade County property records instead of being concealed through a labyrinth of opaque offshore or Delaware shell companies such as those documented in the Panama Papers. Property records show Amparan’s wife, Carolina Croquer, as the most recent owner of the property.

Financial institutions are required to flag a transaction to FinCEN following a suspected incident of money laundering or fraud. Real estate brokers, escrow agents and other real estate professionals, however, are not subject to these same rules.

Money laundering experts said that unless Dezer Development was explicitly aware that Urdaneta had purchased the unit for money laundering purposes, the company would not be required to report it.

“The developer is probably technically correct that he has or she has no obligation to report, but that is really kind of weak, particularly in today’s environment,” said John Cassara, a former special agent with the U.S. Treasury who focused on money laundering.

“It strikes me as willful blindness,” Cassara added. “They don’t want to ask questions.”

A FinCEN advisory last July said the bureau encourages brokers, escrow agents and other real estate professionals to “voluntarily report suspicious transactions involving real estate purchases and sales.”

The influence game

One of the reasons real estate brokers are exempt from the same requirements as financial institutions, experts said, is the industry’s successful lobbying efforts.

In total, the National Association of Realtors has spent $27.52 million in lobbying so far in 2018, data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows, ranking second out of 3,669 organizations involved in lobbying. Since 1998, the group has spent nearly $500 million on lobbying, the data shows.

A FinCEN advisory last July said the bureau encourages real estate professionals to “voluntarily report suspicious transactions involving real estate purchases and sales.”

In total, 44 federal lobbying disclosures were filed on anti-money laundering reporting issues in the first quarter of 2018, up from 21 during the same time last year, according to Bloomberg.

“After the passage of USA PATRIOT Act in 2001 it was expected that FinCEN would include real estate agents as one of the businesses subject to the new rules,” said Delston, the D.C-based anti-money laundering expert. “Not only did that not happen, but also real estate agents were expressly exempted from coverage by those rules.”

On top of NAR’s lobbying, real estate developers have gained clout by donating extensively to both local and national politicians, political parties and political action groups. Michael Dezer gave $100,000 to the pro-Trump Make America Great Again political action committee in 2015, along with Seryl Kushner of Kushner Companies. And according to a sworn statement filed in April, North Miami Beach’s then-mayor, George Vallejo, admitted that his wife was on the Dezers’ payroll at the same time that he was voting on issues related to Dezer Development’s proposed projects. Vallejo said he used an LLC to hide payments from the public so that “his wife’s business would not be seen by … all the political enemies,” according to the statement.

Related Group’s Jorge Pérez gave money directly to local candidates, including congressional candidates Matt Haggman and Donna Shalala, as well as $245,000 to Right to Rise USA, a political action committee for Jeb Bush. There’s also Moishe Mana, who has donated to a number of Democratic candidates, including $33,400 in 2016 to the DNC Services Corporation, a PAC that gives money to Democratic candidates.   

Elizabeth Mendenhall, current president of NAR, said in a statement that “real estate professionals understand their responsibilities in the current efforts to combat money laundering, such as filing suspicious activities reports.”

However, Mendenhall added, federal mandates for brokers “already subject to diverse and comprehensive state and local licensing laws across the country would prove burdensome and unnecessary.”

The NAR’s website further states that “any risk-based assessment would likely find very little risk of money laundering involving real estate agents or brokers.”

Local South Florida brokers echoed the point that the responsibility to report transactions under the GTOs should fall on the title insurance industry rather than them.

“The burden is currently in the right place, which is with a company and an industry that understands the reporting guidelines,” said Christina Pappas, district sales manager with the Keyes Company in Coral Gables.

“At the end of the day, our responsibility is to be a consultant to the customer … to help a buyer buy and a seller sell,” she added. “If someone wants to hide something, they are going to be able to hide something.”

Michael Haltman, the president of Hallmark Abstract Service, a New York-based title insurance provider, said his industry is well-suited to report suspicious transactions because title insurance firms are a “third party to the transaction” and “have less of a vested interest in the business.”

However, that distance from the deal also makes it less likely that they have the full picture. “These people [brokers] are salespeople, they are selling a property,” Haltman said. “That’s their job, and that’s what they do, and unless the government says you need to know your client then nothing will change.”

“I would imagine,” he said, “that Realtors talking to a buyer would be in the best position to know what the true intention of the buyer really is.”

An endemic issue

The criminal indictment in the case, filed Aug. 16, lists another 16 South Florida properties as being tied to the defendants. These include a condo at the Related Group’s Icon Brickell, six units in a small Miami Beach apartment complex, four Coral Gables homes and a Wellington equestrian estate with adjacent vacant land. Related declined to comment.

The government defines some of the properties in the indictment as “substitute properties” that it can seize if necessary, but does not allege the properties are connected to any criminal activity. The Porsche Design Tower unit, however, is set to be seized by the government.

Even so, Dezer Development maintained that it was following the letter of the law outlined in the Fair Housing Act and other legislation mandating that a developer sell to a buyer with the ability to sign a contract and send a deposit.

Money laundering experts and fair housing experts however, called this interpretation expedient.

Rigel Oliveri, a University of Missouri professor who studies the Fair Housing Act, said “it prohibits discrimination, [but] it doesn’t say that you have to sell to every person, it doesn’t say you can’t do a background check.”

In response, Dezer said: “What are my other options if I advertise a unit for sale and someone agrees to buy it, writes a contract for the price I am asking and gives me a deposit? What would be a valid reason to turn them down? Because they are from a different country? Because they have different political beliefs? What is an acceptable test?”

from The Real Deal Miami & Real Estate News News | & Curbed Miami - All https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/see-no-evil-how-a-culture-of-secrecy-boosts-south-floridas-condo-market/#new_tab via IFTTT

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See no evil: How a culture of secrecy boosts South Florida’s condo market

(Illustration by Adria Fruitos)

A lawyer with ties to Venezuela’s oil ministry, a member of the country’s “boliburguesía” elite and a money launderer sat around a Caracas office table while armed guards and a German shepherd with a shock collar stood watch.

The boliburgués placed his handgun on the table. It was November 2015, and the three Venezuelans were pressuring an unnamed associate to persist with a scheme that U.S. authorities would later allege embezzled $1.2 billion from the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA. Much of that money, according to a criminal complaint, ended up in South Florida real estate.

Among those reportedly alleged to be connected to the scheme: the three stepsons of the country’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro; a billionaire Venezuelan TV mogul; and former executives at PDVSA. Eight people have been charged in the case so far, while one defendant — a wealth manager at a Swiss bank — was arrested in August.

With a federal investigation ongoing, the U.S. attorney’s office could seize at least 16 South Florida properties tied to the defendants. But in the initial complaint filed in July 2018, only one was explicitly named: Unit 2205 at the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles. Federal officials allege this condo was ultimately transferred by Carmelo Urdaneta Aqui, who until 2015 was legal counsel to the Venezuelan oil ministry, to the alleged money launderer, José Vicente Amparan Croquer, as payment for services rendered.

Luxury real estate in South Florida has long served as a magnet for wealth from South America. The continent’s tycoons, celebrities, athletes and assorted hustlers have seen it both as a playground and a bank — a good place to invest or park cash, given its proximity, culture, weather and, most of all, its discretion: The provenance of the wealth has historically mattered little to Miami-area developers and brokers. What’s mattered is that their buyers have it.

But even though today’s tougher anti-money laundering laws impose stricter disclosure requirements on banks and lenders involved in real estate purchases, those who build product and those who sell for them can continue to benefit from a culture of secrecy, thanks in no small part to the real estate industry’s intense lobbying and donations at every rung of the political ladder. 

“Developers and real estate agents have no legal obligation to conduct customer due diligence on the purchasers of real property,” said Ross Delston, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer and anti-money laundering expert, “other than to abide by the general tenet that a business would want to avoid taking part in a criminal scheme.”

Gil Dezer, who built the Porsche Design Tower, maintains that his firm operates within the law. He cited anti-discrimination laws, including the Fair Housing Act, that his company interpreted as requiring it to sell to a buyer who can sign a contract and send a deposit. It’s an argument some of his fellow developers have also made. But experts in money laundering and housing law challenged this interpretation.

“There’s nothing in the fair housing law that eliminates or reduces the duty to ensure the legitimacy of funds in a transaction,” said Charles Intriago, a former federal prosecutor and anti-money laundering expert. “That’s bullshit.”

The builder

In May 2016, Urdaneta told associates about a “significant deposit” he put down on a unit in Miami. The developer, he said according to the complaint, was pressuring him to close in 60 days.

The condo at the Porsche Design Tower was located on the 22nd floor of the glassy, black cylindrical skyscraper. The property marked the apex of the post-recession luxury condo construction boom in South Florida, and the buyer pool, the building’s marketing materials bragged, included 22 billionaires. Among the owners: Carlos Peralta Quintero, chairman of Grupo IUSA; Igor Yakovlev, a Russian home appliance mogul; and Terry Taylor, America’s biggest car dealer. Prices started at $1,100 a foot, unheard of at the time in Sunny Isles, and Taylor paid $2,600 a foot, or $25 million, for the four-story penthouse.

The tower was geared toward “the wealthy, runners and gunners, the machismos and testosterones,” said Peter Zalewski, a principal with the Miami real estate consultancy Condo Vultures. “That was the niche, that’s who they were hitting.”

That description could easily be used for the developer himself, Dezer: A brash 40-something with a penchant for supercars and shirts with one too many buttons open.

Dezer is the only son of Israeli émigré Michael Dezer, who in the 1970s used proceeds from a junk mail business to amass a Manhattan real estate portfolio. He then expanded out to South Florida, and today the family owns over 27 acres of oceanfront property in Sunny Isles. Dezer joined the family business in the late 1990s while taking night classes at the University of Miami. He found success in establishing licensing agreements with someone he had long admired, Donald Trump, and Dezer Development went on to build six Trump-branded towers. In December 2007, Dezer got married at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, with Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump in attendance.

Like Trump, Dezer’s tastes tend to the extravagant. His personal car collection includes a $1.5 million Bugatti Veyron, and he has a 1950 Porsche Spyder 550 mounted on the wall of his home. He also owns a $17 million silver Gulfstream IV jet, which he showed off on a CNBC segment of “Secret Lives of the Super Rich.” (Still, he was careful to note in a 2016 Bloomberg profile that “we don’t have security guards and things like that. We don’t show it off too much.”)

In 2012, he secured a master licensing agreement with German-based Porsche Design Group. The building would feature a patented car elevator, known as the “Dezervator,” which would allow owners to park their vehicles right next to their residences in so-called “sky garages.”

Gil Dezer discussing the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach in 2015.

In a 2013 interview with The Real Deal, he explained his vision for the tower.“In the downturn,” he said, “we decided we had to do something so unique, so crazy, so outrageous, so incredible, that we’re not going to be looking for a buyer who needs financing, because at that time there was zero financing. We needed people who had a lot of money and who would respect something that was so wow that they’d want to buy it.”

Unlike some other marquee developers, Dezer Development did not tap outside brokerages such as Douglas Elliman or One Sotheby’s International Realty to sell condos. Instead, it relied on its internal sales operation, Dezer Platinum Realty.

“We market, we don’t advertise, and the upper-level marketing I do myself,” Dezer said in that 2013 interview. “With most of these guys, the key is to make them want it and to be willing to part with their money to have it.”

The buyer(s)

Urdaneta, for one, was willing. According to a confidential informant cited by U.S. authorities in the complaint, he and his co-defendants had gamed Venezuela’s unusual currency exchange system to reap large rewards.

Venezuela had a system where the government was able to exchange its currency (bolivars) at a fixed rate for U.S. dollars. But the fixed exchange rate — six bolivars to one dollar — was far more favorable than the actual exchange rate, 60 bolivars to one dollar, opening up a possibility for fraud and abuse.

If someone, for example, was able to exchange $10 million for 600 million bolivars at the actual rate, and then exchange the money at the government’s fixed rate, they would end up with $100 million. In just two transactions, someone could make a $90 million profit by exploiting this difference.

According to the complaint, Urdaneta and his co-defendants pulled off a similar maneuver by bribing officials at PDVSA. One of the alleged money launderers they used, Amparan, also known as Chente, needed to be paid. The unit at the Porsche Design Tower would become his fee.

As the tower neared completion, Urdaneta received an email from Dezer Development that perturbed him. The email included a pre-closing questionnaire, with a caveat that “taking title under a company or trust may trigger FinCEN reporting requirements.”

The Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury, is tasked with looking into crimes including money laundering. In January 2016, just a few months before Unit 2205 was purchased, FinCEN launched its Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) program, which requires title insurance firms to identify the beneficial owners of shell companies seeking to purchase luxury residential real estate in all-cash deals.

“Under the GTOs, the responsibility has been handed to the title insurance companies,” said Andrew Ittleman, an attorney who focuses on white collar defense and money laundering cases. “They have been deputized to address this issue.”

Given Urdaneta’s deep ties to PDVSA, which were the subject of a 2015 U.S. investigation into a $2 billion money laundering scheme, it would make sense that he would not want to buy the unit in his name. So, according to the complaint, he created a company with his wife as a beneficiary and used that to make the $5.3 million purchase. Property records show that his wife was listed as the manager of a Florida company called Paladium Real Estate Group, created in June 2016.

“Dezer Development allows buyers to close on units in the name of a company so long as the individual controlling the company is the same as the person who signed the initial contract,” the developer said in an email to TRD. “We do this to make sure buyers are not flipping.”

In 2013, Dezer had spoken of personally taking charge of the “upper-level marketing” of the building. When asked now about Unit 2205, however, Dezer said: “I was not involved in this sale. I never met the buyer.”

The complaint alleges that Urdaneta then sought to transfer the unit to Amparan. On Sept. 23, 2016, Amparan’s wife was added as a manager of Paladium, and on Sept. 15, 2017, after the closing, Urdaneta’s wife was removed, leaving Amparan effectively in control of Paladium and thus the condo, according to the complaint.

The purchasing entity was set up through a Brickell Avenue law firm, Juris Magister. Calls and emails to the firm were not returned.

“After closing the developer is no longer involved in transfers of that unit,” Dezer said. As of August 2018, 118 of the building’s 132 units have closed, he added. The total projected sellout of the tower, according to a press release from the developer in March 2017, was $840 million.

The Money Laundering Control Act of 1986, which made the practice a federal crime, came during the heyday of Miami’s “cocaine cowboys.” Banks facilitated the money laundering that was essential to the city’s rampant narcotics trade, and the proceeds were pushed through real estate.

Unlike most other cases where money laundering in real estate is alleged, the buyers of Unit 2205 are listed clearly in Miami-Dade County property records instead of being concealed through a labyrinth of opaque offshore or Delaware shell companies such as those documented in the Panama Papers. Property records show Amparan’s wife, Carolina Croquer, as the most recent owner of the property.

Financial institutions are required to flag a transaction to FinCEN following a suspected incident of money laundering or fraud. Real estate brokers, escrow agents and other real estate professionals, however, are not subject to these same rules.

Money laundering experts said that unless Dezer Development was explicitly aware that Urdaneta had purchased the unit for money laundering purposes, the company would not be required to report it.

“The developer is probably technically correct that he has or she has no obligation to report, but that is really kind of weak, particularly in today’s environment,” said John Cassara, a former special agent with the U.S. Treasury who focused on money laundering.

“It strikes me as willful blindness,” Cassara added. “They don’t want to ask questions.”

A FinCEN advisory last July said the bureau encourages brokers, escrow agents and other real estate professionals to “voluntarily report suspicious transactions involving real estate purchases and sales.”

The influence game

One of the reasons real estate brokers are exempt from the same requirements as financial institutions, experts said, is the industry’s successful lobbying efforts.

In total, the National Association of Realtors has spent $27.52 million in lobbying so far in 2018, data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows, ranking second out of 3,669 organizations involved in lobbying. Since 1998, the group has spent nearly $500 million on lobbying, the data shows.

A FinCEN advisory last July said the bureau encourages real estate professionals to “voluntarily report suspicious transactions involving real estate purchases and sales.”

In total, 44 federal lobbying disclosures were filed on anti-money laundering reporting issues in the first quarter of 2018, up from 21 during the same time last year, according to Bloomberg.

“After the passage of USA PATRIOT Act in 2001 it was expected that FinCEN would include real estate agents as one of the businesses subject to the new rules,” said Delston, the D.C-based anti-money laundering expert. “Not only did that not happen, but also real estate agents were expressly exempted from coverage by those rules.”

On top of NAR’s lobbying, real estate developers have gained clout by donating extensively to both local and national politicians, political parties and political action groups. Michael Dezer gave $100,000 to the pro-Trump Make America Great Again political action committee in 2015, along with Seryl Kushner of Kushner Companies. And according to a sworn statement filed in April, North Miami Beach’s then-mayor, George Vallejo, admitted that his wife was on the Dezers’ payroll at the same time that he was voting on issues related to Dezer Development’s proposed projects. Vallejo said he used an LLC to hide payments from the public so that “his wife’s business would not be seen by … all the political enemies,” according to the statement.

Related Group’s Jorge Pérez gave money directly to local candidates, including congressional candidates Matt Haggman and Donna Shalala, as well as $245,000 to Right to Rise USA, a political action committee for Jeb Bush. There’s also Moishe Mana, who has donated to a number of Democratic candidates, including $33,400 in 2016 to the DNC Services Corporation, a PAC that gives money to Democratic candidates.   

Elizabeth Mendenhall, current president of NAR, said in a statement that “real estate professionals understand their responsibilities in the current efforts to combat money laundering, such as filing suspicious activities reports.”

However, Mendenhall added, federal mandates for brokers “already subject to diverse and comprehensive state and local licensing laws across the country would prove burdensome and unnecessary.”

The NAR’s website further states that “any risk-based assessment would likely find very little risk of money laundering involving real estate agents or brokers.”

Local South Florida brokers echoed the point that the responsibility to report transactions under the GTOs should fall on the title insurance industry rather than them.

“The burden is currently in the right place, which is with a company and an industry that understands the reporting guidelines,” said Christina Pappas, district sales manager with the Keyes Company in Coral Gables.

“At the end of the day, our responsibility is to be a consultant to the customer … to help a buyer buy and a seller sell,” she added. “If someone wants to hide something, they are going to be able to hide something.”

Michael Haltman, the president of Hallmark Abstract Service, a New York-based title insurance provider, said his industry is well-suited to report suspicious transactions because title insurance firms are a “third party to the transaction” and “have less of a vested interest in the business.”

However, that distance from the deal also makes it less likely that they have the full picture. “These people [brokers] are salespeople, they are selling a property,” Haltman said. “That’s their job, and that’s what they do, and unless the government says you need to know your client then nothing will change.”

“I would imagine,” he said, “that Realtors talking to a buyer would be in the best position to know what the true intention of the buyer really is.”

An endemic issue

The criminal indictment in the case, filed Aug. 16, lists another 16 South Florida properties as being tied to the defendants. These include a condo at the Related Group’s Icon Brickell, six units in a small Miami Beach apartment complex, four Coral Gables homes and a Wellington equestrian estate with adjacent vacant land. Related declined to comment.

The government defines some of the properties in the indictment as “substitute properties” that it can seize if necessary, but does not allege the properties are connected to any criminal activity. The Porsche Design Tower unit, however, is set to be seized by the government.

Even so, Dezer Development maintained that it was following the letter of the law outlined in the Fair Housing Act and other legislation mandating that a developer sell to a buyer with the ability to sign a contract and send a deposit.

Money laundering experts and fair housing experts however, called this interpretation expedient.

Rigel Oliveri, a University of Missouri professor who studies the Fair Housing Act, said “it prohibits discrimination, [but] it doesn’t say that you have to sell to every person, it doesn’t say you can’t do a background check.”

In response, Dezer said: “What are my other options if I advertise a unit for sale and someone agrees to buy it, writes a contract for the price I am asking and gives me a deposit? What would be a valid reason to turn them down? Because they are from a different country? Because they have different political beliefs? What is an acceptable test?”

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/see-no-evil-how-a-culture-of-secrecy-boosts-south-floridas-condo-market/#new_tab via IFTTT