President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen has received a lot of attention this week for secretly accepting payments from AT&T, a Swiss healthcare company, and a firm linked to a Russian oligarch — all while his boss was in the White House.But he also had another major client: a massive South Korean weapons-maker mired in corruption scandals that also happens to be up for a $16 billion contract with the U.S. Air Force.The company, known as Korean Aerospace Industries, dropped Cohen $150,000, supposedly for his expertise around U.S. accounting issues, even though Cohen has not generally worked as an accountant. The payment arrived in November 2017, the same month President Trump visited South Korea for talks with President Moon Jae-in.“Why a military aerospace company would want ‘accounting advice’ from a real estate consulting firm run by a lawyer is indeed rather suspicious,” said Sam Perlo-Freeman, head of the Global Arms Business and Corruption program at the World Peace Foundation in Massachusetts.The $16 billion deal to sell jets to the U.S. Air Force under its T-X pilot training program is widely seen as a massive contract for the scandal-plagued company.Under the program, Korean Aerospace, known as KAI, alongside American partner Lockheed Martin, would ship some 350 of its new T-50 Golden Eagle jets to the Air Force.Read: Who is Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch tied to a $500K payment to Michael CohenThe T-50 jet is easily the single most important product in South Korea’s emerging arms export industry, analysts said. And the program has gotten support from the very top of South Korean politics.“Winning T-X would be like winning the lottery for Korean Aerospace,” said Richard Aboulafia, an arms industry analyst with the Teal Group based in Virginia.In October 2017, South Korean President Moon Jae-in himself posed in a T-50 jet, flashed a big thumbs up, and wished the company success in selling them abroad.But the future wasn’t always so bright for KAI. The summer before President Moon posed in the jet, the company’s CEO, Ha Seong-yong and another senior official were arrested on charges of embezzlement and fraudulent accounting. Since becoming KAI CEO in 2013, Ha has been accused of creating “slush funds” and inappropriately lobbying lawmakers for his own reappointment in May 2016 under former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, according to South Korean press reports.Read: Trump’s lawyer is cashing in on Trump’s presidency. And it might all be legal.In July, five of the company’s subcontractors’ offices were searched in relation to the corruption probe.In September, as the corruption scandal widened, a Vice President at the company was found dead in his apartment in an apparent suicide.Read: Everything you need to know about the dossier linking Trump's lawyer to a Russian oligarchThe two other major corporations who paid Cohen through his firm called Essential Consultants LLC — AT&T and Novartis — have said they were looking to better understand the new administration and sought Cohen’s insight."Essential Consulting was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration," AT&T said in a statement. "They did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017."KAI, on the other hand, has said that it wasn’t aware of Essential Consultants’ connection to Trump at the time Cohen was hired.Cohen worked closely with Trump for over a decade as an attorney and executive in the Trump Organization. After Trump won the presidency, Cohen stayed in New York as Trump’s personal attorney. He’s received widespread media coverage as Trump's "fixer" and for his background in real estate and the rough and tumble taxi industry. He has not, however, been widely known for his accounting expertise.Cover image: Courtesy of Republic of Korea Air Force, Korea Aerospace Industries. Photo illustration by Leslie Xia
Advertisement
Advertisement