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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/world/asia/fire-trump-tower-azerbaijan.html
Former Trump Tower Burns in Azerbaijan, Injuring at Least 4
By ANDREW E. KRAMERAPRIL 28, 2018
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The 33-floor building in Baku, Azerbaijan, once a Trump-branded tower, is the second property linked to President Trump to catch fire this month, after a blaze in New York killed an art collector. Credit Michael Steele/Getty Images for BEGOC
MOSCOW — A fire broke out on Saturday in a high-rise that until recently had been called Trump Tower in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, injuring at least four people.
Footage on social media showed flames shooting out of the windows and smoke billowing from the 33-floor building, which is still under construction and had been labeled “Donald Trump’s Worst Deal” by New Yorker magazine.
The blaze, which broke out on the top floor of the building, burned down through about 20 stories before firefighters extinguished the flames by midafternoon, the news agency Interfax reported.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Emergency Situations did not release further information.
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Footage from the scene shows the tower burning as firefighters attempt to extinguish the flames.
APA TV via Associated Press
The building was the second property linked to President Trump to catch fire this month, after a blaze broke out on the 50th floor of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York, killing an art collector. That building was built in the 1980s, before sprinklers were required in new residential towers in New York City.
The Trump Organization withdrew its licensing agreement for the Baku skyscraper shortly after the 2016 election, as it promised to wind down international projects that could pose conflicts of interest to the president.
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Mr. Trump had partnered in the development with the son of a former minister of transportation in the oil-rich former Soviet state.
The Trump-branded hotel never opened, but it was dogged by controversy. Mr. Trump cut the deal despite allegations by United States diplomats that the minister had dealings with front companies for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and was corrupt.
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The planned hotel had been under construction since 2008 and was nearing completion when Mr. Trump announced the licensing agreement six months before joining the presidential race in 2015.
His partner was Anar Mammadov, the billionaire son of the country’s former minister of transportation, Ziya Mammadov. In a diplomatic cable leaked in 2009, American diplomats described the father as “notoriously corrupt, even for Azerbaijan.”
The cable also accused the former minister of awarding highway construction projects to a onetime senior Iranian military official in the Revolutionary Guards.
“We assume Mammadov is a silent partner in these contracts,” the diplomatic cable said.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization told The Associated Press for an article published in June 2016 that the organization had been unaware of the corruption accusations and the Iranian links of the Mammadov family, but that it postponed the project that year for economic reasons.
The Trump Organization pulled out of the deal that December and dropped a host of other overseas projects after the election.
Follow Andrew E. Kramer on Twitter: @AndrewKramerNYT.
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http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...rump-hotel-in-azerbaijan-catches-fire-reports
Fire breaks out at unopened Trump-branded hotel in Azerbaijan
By John Bowden - 04/28/18 11:37 AM EDT 201
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A fire broke out at the site of what was once slated to be a Trump Organization hotel in Azerbaijan on Saturday, injuring several people, according to reports.
The fire broke out in one of the middle floors of the unopened Trump International Hotel development in Baku, Azerbaijan, The Independent reports. The company canceled the development after the 2016 election.
At least four people were injured in the blaze Saturday, according to The New York Times.
The deputy head of Azerbaijan's Emergency Situations Ministry told The Independent it took more than three hours to extinguish the blaze.
The Associated Press reports that Trump earned between $2.5 million and $2.8 million between 2012 and 2016 in hotel management fees on the project despite it never opening to the public.
Efforts to battle Saturday's fire were complicated by the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which is being held Sunday in the city and has led to road closures.
Saturday's blaze comes a few weeks after a fatal fire at Trump Tower in New York, which killed one person.
That fire was the second affecting Trump's signature New York headquarters in a matter of months.
Firefighters previously responded to a minor fire in a cooling tower on the building's roof in January, during which two people sustained injuries.
