Trump dreamed of his name on towers across former Soviet Union | McClatchy Washington Bureau

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Trump denies having business in Russia, but has benefited from Russian investors in Trump-branded projects and Russian buyers in his luxury hotels and residences.

McClatchy’s investigation reveals how Trump sought a foothold not just in Russia but across the former Soviet empire. Not known before, the Trump Organization in 2012 negotiated with then-Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov for an obelisk-shaped tower to be built near the presidential palace, designed by architect John Fotiadis, who also did the Batumi project and lists offices in New York and the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Trump Diamond lost out to a rival project in Astana for the tallest building in Central Asia, the 75-story Abu Dhabi Plaza.

Development in the region, say experts, often requires the participation of politically connected elites or government officials.

When Trump and Silk Road Group deep-sixed their Batumi arrangement via a joint statement on Jan. 6 a Trump Organization executive said the decision was “purely business related” and not because of ethical concerns.

Silk Road, however, attributes the deal’s collapse in part to “intense media scrutiny” following a Wall Street Journal report that alleged that the company’s chairman had earlier ties to militia groups, which the company strongly denies.

“Even if this (partnership) has now been terminated, I think it deserves a hard look,” said Norman Eisen, a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic and a former White House ethics officer in the Obama administration. “I think it’s another set of questions that need to be asked.”

Entrepreneurs Without Borders

Trump’s attempt to penetrate the ex-Soviet empire began in 2005 when he inked a one-year deal with developer Bayrock Group, run by Kazakhs and Russian-émigré, felon and Trump associate Felix Sater, to find a suitable location in Moscow for a Trump tower. Bayrock failed in that attempt, though it teamed with Trump for projects in New York, Florida and Arizona.

McClatchy has learned that over the next two years Trump applied for trademarks for his name on a potential tower in Kazakhstan, and for Trump vodka there, too.

In fact, Trump had sought trademarks in 2007 for his vodka_ which ended production four years later amid poor U.S. sales_ in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

In 2012, Trump sought to trademark his name for use in hotels and real estate in Armenia, Belarus, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, McClatchy’s investigation found.

All signed off on the requests except Iran, which took no action. Under international norms, inaction is generally assumed to mean de facto approval, but it’s unclear whether Trump’s trademark is active in Iran.

The Trump organization also signed a letter of intent, which was not executed, to license the Trump name for the Trump Diamond tower near Akorda, the opulent presidential palace in Kazakhstan, ruled by autocrat Nursultan Nazarbayev since 1989. An architect’s rendition, obtained by McClatchy, shows an obelisk with Trump’s name at the apex, and it would have soared over everything else within miles.

“The whole aesthetic of Trump goes very well with Central Asia -- the emphasis on ‘the personal is political,’ the use of personal connections … this kind of murky world of transnational relations in real estate, relatively unregulated and unmonitored,” said Alexander Cooley, director of a Columbia University institute on Russia and Eurasia and author of a new book called Dictators Without Borders.

Trump’s push happened at the same time that ex-Soviet republics, rich in natural resources and rife with corruption, authoritarian governments and political persecution, were playing the United States, Russia and China off each other in pursuit of investors.

It’s a part of the world filled with intrigue, where loyalties aren’t always clear. The New Yorker magazine reported in March that Trump’s business associates in Azerbaijan had ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the dreaded military wing of the Iranian government under financial sanction by the United States and the European Union. The Trump Organization backed out of that relationship in mid-December, about a month before Trump took office and about three weeks before scrapping the Georgia deal.

Georgia on His Mind

None of Trump’s initial plans came to fruition. The Georgia project was the first to advance. The plan began to hatch in 2010 and was finalized in 2012. That’s the same year Trump signed on to a deal in Azerbaijan to lease his name and scoop up royalties from a building to be constructed in Baku.

The Georgia project’s origins trace to a relationship between then-Trump Organization lawyer Michael D. Cohen and one of the Silk Road Group partners, U.S.-based Giorgi Rtskhiladze.

Rtskhiladze (pronounced Skil-Lad-ZEE) is married to Kazakh movie star Ayanat Ksenbai. He is a financier in energy, banking and media who once backed the clothing lines sold throughout the former Soviet Union by singers Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani and Beyoncé Knowles.

The U.S.-based partner Rtskhiladze and Silk Road Chairman George Ramishvili formed a Delaware-incorporated company called Silk Road Transatlantic Alliance, hoping to leverage Trump’s name to bring glitzy casinos to their country; it was part of a larger effort that Georgian leaders hoped would boost tourism and investment.

Cohen traveled to Georgia twice to scope out potential sites. The Trump Organization envisioned Batumi as the starting point of what trademark filings and architect’s drawings show would have been several Trump towers in the region.

Later, Cohen teamed up with Rtskhiladze to push Trump Diamond in Kazakhstan, the Georgian tapping his Kazakh ties to seek financial backing. Cohen did not respond to requests by phone and email for comment.

Georgia’s charismatic English-speaking leader Mikheil “Misha” Saakashvili, who had been pitched on the project by Rtskhiladze, went to Trump Tower in Manhattan in March 2011 to announce plans for the Batumi tower and another in Tbilisi, the capital. A year later, Trump and Cohen returned the favor in palm tree-lined Batumi, unveiling details alongside Saakashvili of the planned $250 million five-star luxury tower.

Neither Trump nor Silk Road Group has disclosed anything about the financing of the planned Trump Tower Batumi or the royalties it would throw off to Trump.

“These are subject to non-disclosure agreements,” Silk Road said in written answers to McClatchy from its headquarters in Tbilisi. Both parties are privately held business empires.

Saakashvili “was going to turn this sleepy little port town into the Las Vegas of the Black Sea,” said Paul Rimple, the Tbilisi-based author of Who Owned Georgia, a book about who owned what during the Georgian president’s eight years in office. “For Saakashvili, having the Trump name gave him legitimacy.”

But voters ousted Saakashvili in late 2012. His successors did not share the dream of making Batumi the gaming capital of the region.

Still, even after Saakashvili fled Georgia, the project hadn’t been scotched, though it was sidelined by a regional economic crisis. A side letter to the Batumi deal allowed the parties to leave it dormant if necessary, McClatchy has learned, making it unclear why Trump walked away in January.

Who Is Silk Road Group?

Calling itself one of the largest private-investment firms in Central Asia, the Silk Road Group does business in the energy, transportation, banking, media, winemaking and digital sectors. Its reach extends throughout the former Soviet Union and Persian Gulf.

Two prominent persons in Georgia, demanding anonymity in order to speak freely, said its chairman, Ramishvili, made his fortune transporting oil and other commodities shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 1990’s were a time of turmoil, with plenty of opportunities for creative entrepreneurs and little enforceable law standing in the way.

“There was a lot of smuggling going on, and it was well connected to the state security services,” recalled one of the businessmen.

This was hardly unique to Georgia.

“The oligarchs in the former Soviet space … are people who figured out how to make money in an emerging market system where rule of law was not well established,” said William Courtney, U.S. ambassador to Georgia from 1995 to 1997 and now a senior fellow at the Rand Corp., a policy research organization.

The Silk Road Group flatly denied involvement in smuggling, and Georgian financial-crime investigators, citing “the absence of a crime,” closed a yearlong money-laundering probe in 2014.

“Any such references have no factual basis and are based on unsubstantiated rumors,” the company said in a statement provided to McClatchy through its U.S.-based partner’s spokeswoman Melanie A. Bonvicino.

The statement said Silk Road forged its oil and logistics business working with major European oil trading companies and Western banks to get Kazakh oil out through Georgia to world markets.

Silk Road challenged accusations first made in local media and later reported by the Wall Street Journal late last December that Ramishvili had ties to militia groups in the 1990s.

Giorgi Nasrashvili, a senior analyst in Transparency International’s Georgia office, cautioned that “detailed information on these issues beyond these rumors is not available.”

Silk Road intends to pursue all available legal remedies against the U.S. newspaper, said Bonvicino, because of “false and defamatory reporting that definitely contributed to the termination of the Trump deal.”

Steve Severinghaus, a spokesman for the Wall Street Journal, said, “We stand by our reporting.”

A key Trump Organization executive said the Georgia project termination was simply a business decision.

“All I can tell you is that the decision by the parties to terminate the development was purely business related and that we had no knowledge whatsoever with respect to any of the other business dealings” (of Silk Road Group), said Alan Garten, executive vice president and chief legal officer for the Trump Organization. Garten declined to answer specific questions.

Ramishvili was among numerous businessmen who had become wealthy during the tenure of Eduard Shevardnadze, a former Soviet foreign minister who was twice elected to lead post-Soviet Georgia.

When Saakashvili took office in 2004, he detained many of these tycoons, including Ramishvili.

“Mr. Ramishvili was not jailed in 2004, he was briefly questioned by Georgian law enforcement and quickly released,” the company explained in its statement to McClatchy.

Ramishvili later developed the prominent Radisson Blu Iveria in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. Located on the square that was the epicenter of Georgia’s 2003 pro-democracy Rose Revolution, the posh hotel opened in 2009 and includes a casino.

December 7, 2009