The family business · Before politics · № 7
Trump Organization licenses its name to a Baku tower developed by the family of Azerbaijan's transport minister
“We had no equity. We didn’t control the project. The flow of funds is in the wrong direction.” Alan Garten, Trump Organization chief legal officer
- Date
- , Interview with The New Yorker, published March 2017
- Subject
- Azerbaijan
- Benefit
- Real estate and licensing
- Government
- Azerbaijan
- Beneficiary
- Donald Trump (Trump Organization)
- Amount
- $2.8 million reported in financial disclosures, plus a $2.5 million payment in 2012
- Topic
- Ethics & conflicts
- Era
- Before politics
What happened
The Trump Organization finalized contracts in May 2012 to license the Trump name to the Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku and to manage the hotel, and announced the project on November 4, 2014 with Anar Mammadov of Garant Holding. Anar Mammadov is the son of Ziya Mammadov, Azerbaijan's transportation minister from 2002 until February 2017. The New Yorker reported in March 2017 that the contracts were signed by the minister's brother Elton Mammadov, then a member of parliament, and cited a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty investigation that found the complex was built partly on land controlled by the transportation ministry. The magazine reported that Trump's public filings showed $2.8 million from the deal and that company documents showed a further $2.5 million payment in 2012. The hotel never opened, and the company said in December 2016 that it had ended the deal. Alan Garten, the company's chief legal officer, said it was "merely a licensor" and that its due diligence had not discovered "any red flags."