Could it be .... money laundering?

[P]roperty transactions totaling more than $150 million [on the banks of a toxic Brooklyn canal that triggered a series of real estate deals] began in late 2014 and early 2015 and included sales prices well above the assessed value of the parcels, as well as high-risk loans that experts said raise red flags. At the center of each deal is either Jared Kushner or Michael Cohen, whose business dealings have attracted close scrutiny from prosecutors and regulators since Trump’s election.

The transactions were financed through Signature Bank, one of three banks whose ties to Kushner have been widely reported to be under review by New York banking regulators. The bank’s board members have included Ivanka Trump and former Republican U.S. senator Al D’Amato.

[...]

USA TODAY asked six real estate, finance, and tax law experts to review aspects of the real estate deals and mortgages. Each cautioned that the deals could be perfectly legal, but they said the timing of the transactions and the fact that so many related parties were involved make them highly unusual and raise red flags about the rapid inflation of property values.

[...]

Signature Bank spokeswoman Susan Lewis said in response to questions about the bank’s relationship with Cohen that “the bank’s senior management did not have any knowledge of him or who he was until he started appearing in the newspapers in the last year.”

  USA Today

We'll see.

In October 2014, a joint venture led by Kushner Companies paid $72.5 million for three lots of land along the polluted waterway to a company owned by New York developer Herbert Chaves.

[...]

The purchase price in the Kushner deal far exceeded the assessed market value, which was $3 million at the time of the sale, according to city records.

[...]

Chaves' firms used the cash from Kushner to buy apartments from Trump attorney Michael Cohen. Chaves paid $32 million for four apartments that Cohen bought one to three years prior for $11.4 million.

The collective market value of the four properties at the time of the sale Dec. 10, 2014, was a total of $6.6 million, according to New York City property assessment records — roughly one-fifth of the purchase price.

Chaves did not take out any mortgages for his purchase of the four properties.

Not at all suspect. Not at all.

Cohen, in turn, immediately reinvested his new $32 million in a [deal] of his own — part of which involved Chaves.

[...]

The 3.2-acre canal-front property, used as a parking lot for utility service vehicles, features views of a waterway that on a recent day was strewn with debris, including a sideways shopping cart and overturned stroller. Former tenants — including a wagon painter, blacksmith, auto wrecking facility and gas station — left volatile organic compounds in the property’s soil and groundwater.

In addition, the property was not zoned for residential development, limiting what could be done with the land, absent an approved zoning change.

[...]

The property’s environmental issues made it a risky proposition for any bank looking to back a development venture. If the site couldn’t be decontaminated, the property was never going to be much more than it was — an eyesore where Verizon parked vehicles.

The transaction in October 2014 was backed by a $40 million mortgage from Signature Bank. Ivanka Trump was a member of Signature Bank’s board of directors from 2011 to 2013.

[...]

At the time of the deal, Signature Bank’s board included former senator D’Amato.

[...]

Catherine Ghiglieri, a former banking commissioner of Texas and co-author of two books on banking, said banks have policies and procedures that are used to make loans, and if there is toxic waste on a site with no cleanup underway, the “bank will not loan money unless there is some mitigating circumstances.”

“They are lending other people's money,” she said. “They are not venture capitalists. They assess risk based on the loans. I would not see that kind of loan being made by a bank.”

Depends on the bank, doesn't it?

Kushner’s company applied in 2015 to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Brownfield Cleanup Program for funding to remove contaminants from the land, and it was approved later that year. The state installed monitoring wells to investigate contamination on the site, and an investigation report is being finalized.

New York City lobbying records show the Kushner joint venture poured $180,000 in 2015 and 2016 into an effort to lobby city officials to rezone the land.

Any money spent on actually cleaning it up?

New York City Councilman Brad Lander, who was among the lobbied officials, said he began to have serious issues with the Kushner group after the presidential election when Kushner became a senior adviser in the White House.

Lander said he became concerned that the White House, which controls the Superfund cleanup programs, could somehow retaliate against the district and not allow the cleanup to continue if the city didn’t go along with the team’s demands. On the other hand, if he and the city voted in favor of the Kushner team, it would look like he and his colleagues were looking to help Kushner, who clearly held a financial stake in the project.

Ultimately, the Kushner joint venture sold the land in April 2018.

[...]

The Kushner group’s profit was substantial: The property purchased for $72.5 million in late 2014 was sold to the international property firm RFR Holding for $115 million.

Lander said he’s not sure if zoning issues prompted the team to eventually sell “or if it has something to do with the Kushner family’s well-publicized need for cash.” The property remains a parking lot for service vehicles.

[...]

[T]hose corporations are being offered as collateral for a loan against the equity in the apartment building, according to experts who reviewed the records.

It is unclear how much was extracted from the loan or how any funds drawn from the financing were used.

New York real estate attorney Michael Zuckerman of the firm Warshaw Burstein, who specializes in complex real estate finance, said it is possible the financing statement indicates a loan was taken out to aid other business ventures.

Or maybe clean up some money?

“It’s going to be very hard to figure out what [Cohen] did with the money,” Zuckerman said.

[...]

Signature Bank was one of three banks that received requests early this year from the New York State Department of Financial Services for records of its interactions with Kushner. The department did not respond to a request for comment.

In an interview with the New York-focused real estate publication The Real Deal published early this month, Kushner’s father, Charles, called the request “nonsense.”

“Let them look. We welcome them to look,” he said. “What do they want from our files? What do they want from the bank’s files? All of our banks have … called us and said, ‘Give them whatever you have because it’s stupid.’ ”

A witch hunt?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.