How Ricardo Bellino built a career on a Trump deal that never happened
Brazilian businessman is giddy with plans to parlay his proximity to his friend — the CEO of America — into something bigger
Sao Paulo — The most lucrative deal of Ricardo Bellino’s life was Villa Trump, a $500m golf resort that never got built. Bellino pitched Donald Trump on the idea in 2003 in his Manhattan office under the pressure of a three-minute deadline. The deal that featured a Jack Nicklaus-designed course and Bill Clinton as honorary celebrity member fell through when the project’s Brazilian investors backed out — but not without termination fees. Trump walked away with $7m, Bellino and his partners twice that. By then, Bellino had already spun his encounter with Trump into a book on the art of the pitch. He called it You Have 3 Minutes! with a foreword by Trump. Now a multimillionaire with homes in Miami and Barcelona, Bellino has made a career out of peddling the Trump name. He is giddy with plans to parlay his proximity into something bigger. Like middlemen and partners across nearly two dozen countries where Trump has done business, Bellino is vying to play a role in a presidency rife with...
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