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Owners of Former Trump Panama Hotel Say President’s Company Evaded Taxes

The owners of the president’s former hotel say they have records showing the Trump Organization did not pay taxes.

The majority owners of the former Trump Panama hotel say they’ve unearthed old financial records showing the Trump Organization evaded the country’s taxes, according to a new federal court filing, The Washington Post reports. Cypriot investor Orestes Fintiklis, whose company is the majority owner of the building once home to the Trump Ocean Club in Panama City, made the filing Monday in New York. Fintiklis—who prevailed in hard-fought attempt last year to fire the Trump Organization as the hotel’s manager—is suing the Trump Organization, which is also suing him, with both parties contending that the other breached prior agreements. In Monday’s filing, Fintiklis claims the records show the Trump Organization was not paying a required 12.5 percent Panamanian tax on management fees required to run the hotel and that the company also avoided taxes by under-reporting the salaries it paid to hotel employees. “Had Trump been honest... about its failure to pay taxes on the management fees it earned and its failure to properly report employee salaries to Panama’s social security agency,” his company would not have bought his share of the hotel, Fintiklis says in the suit. Fintiklis did not provide a monetary figure for the taxes Trump allegedly evaded.