A new report from Business Insider outlines how former President Donald Trump appears to have lost tens of millions of dollars over the course of recent years in connection to two golf courses that he owns in Scotland. Like other parts of the Trump business, the courses have not been doing financially well.
The golf courses in question, which are located in Turnberry and Aberdeenshire, have not posted a profit at any point while they’ve been in the Trump company’s possession, and to keep the courses functioning, Trump has loaned large sums of money to the properties. At issue is the fact that these loans — which are interest free — were apparently issued in British currency, which has majorly declined in value throughout recent years. Thus, in the event of an eventual repayment in U.S. dollars, the former president is going to get back a lot less than he originally gave.
Trump could have avoided this problem by hedging the loans, which entails “fixing the repayment rate for a loan when it is created,” Business Insider explains — but there’s no publicly available indication that he undertook that step. According to recent updates, the Turnberry course’s parent company owes the former president £113,425,000, which works out to around $160 million, while the Aberdeenshire’s parent company owes him £44,400,049, which is about $62.6 million. Investment analyst Stephen Clapham estimated late last year that Trump’s losses due to currency devaluations stood at $40 million, and although British currency has risen slightly in value since that estimation, Business Insider notes that Trump’s losses still appear to stand at tens of millions of dollars.
As Clapham put it, the “most likely explanation is that Trump has made this loan and incurred a significant loss. It’s the simplest explanation and probably the most likely.” It’s yet another problem for the ex-president, whose business has been under criminal investigation in New York over potential fraud. Recently, a grand jury was convened in connection to that investigation, suggesting that prosecutors might be preparing to propose charges connected to the investigation, since the grand jury would be tasked with deciding whether to issue the charges.
