Michael Cohen, the personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, seems to have aided a Florida-based immigration firm to earn millions after they employed his services last year, according to The Associated Press. US Immigration Fund faced a regulatory crackdown on the EB-5 US visa program, which disappeared soon after the firm reached out to Cohen.
The EB-5 US visa program allows overseas investors to gain permanent residency in the US if they invest a large amount in particular real estate ventures in the country. Cohen connected the company to a lobbying firm that appears to have succeeded in quelling the crackdown, the report claims, although it is unclear what their efforts entailed.
The decision to end the crackdown resulted in the US Immigration Fund, the country’s most successful visa brokering operation, raking in millions of dollars in fees as they acted as middlemen to connect firms in the US to overseas investors seeking US visas. The company says that as much as $3 million has been raised for projects since 2010 because of the EB-5 US visa program. Had the crackdown on EB-5 US visas gone ahead, the program would have been limited to struggling communities, something unlikely to be useful to the firm’s business.
The owner of the firm, Nicholas Mastroianni II, was raising around $700 million for several buildings in and around New York City when the crackdown was first announced, the AP says.