President Donald Trump’s sons are partnering on a new overseas development with a pair of companies linked to a sanctioned foreign oligarch and possibly the Russian mob.
The Trump Organization is expanding its $2.7 billion real estate empire with the 70-story Trump Tower Tbilisi, which would become the tallest building in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and The Daily Beast reported on the investors in the luxury apartment complex project.
"The Daily Beast can reveal that one of the Trumps’ partners on the project, Tbilisi-based Archi Group, has ties to Russian-made oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is sanctioned by the U.S.," the website reported. "A second company involved in the plans, the New York-based Sapir Organization, was founded by Tamir Sapir, a late Trump associate with alleged links to Kremlin spies operating in the U.S. He was at one time subject to an FBI money-laundering and extortion probe as an alleged front for Russian organized crime."
The Trump family's business empire continues to expand alongside the president's political power, raising fresh conflict-of-interest concerns as the new project adds to a growing list of deals with partners connected to foreign governments and figures of interest to U.S. law enforcement.
The Tbilisi tower is being developed in partnership with Archi Group, whose founder Ilia Tsulaia was a member of parliament for the Ivanishvili regime and appeared on a list of prospective sanctions targets submitted to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, although no sanctions were imposed.
Tsulaia's firm previously received millions in government financing during the same period his associates donated heavily to Ivanishvili's political operation.
The American partner on the deal, the Sapir Organization, brings its own complicated history.
Its late namesake founder emigrated from the Soviet Union and built a Manhattan electronics business that, according to investigative reporting, allegedly served as a KGB resource. By 1998, the FBI was investigating Sapir for money laundering and extortion, believing he was acting as a front for Russian organized crime, although he was never charged.
The Trump family has pocketed an estimated $20 million in licensing fees from a Saudi developer, brokered a $2 billion crypto deal with an Abu Dhabi state-backed fund weeks before Trump eased AI-chip restrictions on the UAE, and secured a major U.S. Army drone contract for a firm in which Donald Trump Jr. holds a stake — months after his father signed an executive order favoring American-made drones.
Since returning to office, the family's wealth has grown by an estimated $5 billion, although both Eric and Donald Trump Jr. deny leveraging their father's position.