The Trump Family’s Newest Partners: Middle Eastern Governments

Eight months before Mr. Trump entered the presidential race in 2015, the family business Announce plans to license her name for a 33-story hotel in Baku, Azerbaijan, and the partner there was the son of a government minister. This project was eventually abandoned.

But elsewhere, the Trump Organization’s foreign deals generally did not involve a direct financial role by a foreign government, or at least any public acknowledgment of direct foreign government funding or a significant land contribution, according to an examination of the transactions by The New York Times. .

During Mr. Trump’s time in the White House, the Trump International Hotel in Washington was often a destination for foreign government officials, including delegations in town for planned meetings with Mr. Trump. The governments of Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and China have spent money in the hotel, According to the documents that his former accounting firm turned it over to Congress. The hotel received more than $3.75 million of foreign governments from 2017 to 2020, House investigators estimated.

The Trump Organization confirmed that it paid all profits from these hotel stays to the Treasury Department through voluntary annual payments.

But this new deal — in which the Trump Organization benefits from land or financial capital provided by foreign governments — only increases the potential for a conflict of interest to emerge, as Mr. Trump continues his dual roles as White House nominee and business executive, ethics attorneys said.

“This is another example of Trump obtaining a personal financial benefit in return for past or future political power,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. The Saudis and the government of Oman may believe that granting Trump this licensing deal will benefit them in the future, if Trump becomes president again. This deal could be a way to make sure she’s in Trump’s favor.”

The Aida project in Oman is set to be built 20 minutes outside the capital, Muscat, on a ridge overlooking the Arabian Sea on land controlled by the Oman Development and Tourism Company, a tourism agency owned by the Omani government. It will include 3,500 luxury villas, two hotels with a total of 450 rooms and a golf course, in addition to many restaurants and shops.