There’s always been a lot of rumours and hearsay flying around about Donald Trump‘s fabled plans to build a casino in Sydney back in the 80s. The plan never eventuated, and it was never entirely clear why that was.
There’s a doozy of a report in The Australian today that’s worth your time. The long and short of it? Trump’s Sydney casino was killed off because of a “high-level police report” which alleged that he had ties to the Mafia.
As per The Australian:
Donald Trump’s plan to build and operate Sydney’s first casino was killed off in 1987 by the NSW government on the back of a high-level police report that warned against the now-US President’s bid because of his “mafia connections’’.
The secret report by the NSW Police Board into the suitability of tenderers for the inner-city Darling Harbour casino project cautioned that it would be “dangerous’’ to go ahead with Mr Trump’s joint venture with the Queensland-based Kern Corporation, headed by the late developer Barry Paul.
Of course, you’d be hard-pressed to find a New York City developer in the 80s who didn’t have some ties to the mob. And it’s definitely funny that NSW Police – an absolute hive of scum and villainy in that decade – would have the temerity to allege organised crime links. The sheer temerity!
Cabinet, as well as finding Trump’s alleged mafia links “unacceptable,” also found that the join Trump / Kern Corporation tender made claims about casino profitability that were so absurd that no one could take them seriously.
According to the cabinet minutes, a report by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Australia found the Kern/Trump proposal was financially viable on the basis that the projected financial structure put forward by Kern/Trump was reasonably based.
“However, the projected casino revenue estimates are not soundly based and the quantum of the potential overstatement is so material that the tender is not financially viable,” the CIBC report found. “Also, the tender is not financially viable on the basis of expected returns to equity investors.”
The whole thing’s worth a read, but here’s your takeaway: even Trump was allegedly too corrupt for bloody New South Wales in the 1980s. That’s saying something.