#31. Georgia on his Mind(2011)
Now that Trump had become the Colonel Sanders of luxury condos, he took his new franchising model to the Georgian port city of Batumi. Once again, the project flopped. And once again, Trump cashed in.
In March 2011, five years before his first presidential run, Donald Trump stood beside Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in the marble lobby of Trump Tower Manhattan to unveil yet another new international venture. This one was called Trump Tower Batumi, a luxury skyscraper planned for Georgia’s second biggest city which has become a resort known as the pearl of the Black Sea.
The announcement, staged with Trump’s characteristic flair, presented the project as a symbol of partnership. But the staging concealed a far more interesting story. Just as Bayrock had begun licensing Trump’s name for the SoHo Trump and other projects, so now the Trump brand was being licensed by another group. This one was linked to Kazakhstan’s B.T.A. Bank, a financial institution at the center of a multibillion-dollar embezzlement scandal, and a network of businessmen whose later activities would reverberate through Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The Batumi project, like most of Trump’s foreign ventures, was a branding agreement rather than a fully capitalized investment. Trump’s role was to contribute his name, generate publicity, and approve the design, while his partners supplied the financing, political access, and local permissions. The Georgian developer was the Silk Road Group, controlled by businessman George Ramishvili, with Giorgi Rtskhiladze acting as an intermediary who helped promote the project. But the group’s financial backing came from the B.T.A. Bank of Kazakhstan, whose former chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov stood accused of embezzling more than $6 billion in state funds through offshore companies and fraudulent loans.
Investigators and court filings later alleged that portions of Ablyazov’s missing money were routed through offshore vehicles that invested in Western real estate. That included companies tied to the Trump SoHo in New York, a project I wrote about that was connected to Trump partners Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif of the Bayrock Group, and was awash in dirty money funneled through shell companies, anonymous LLCs, and offshore accounts.
But now, as Bloomberg News reported, the same financial currents that ran through Manhattan’s luxury market turned up in Batumi, of all places, underscoring the fact that the Trump name was now a reliable ongoing global conduit for capital originating in the opaque Russian and Eurasian kleptocratic networks.
By the time Trump posed for cameras with Saakashvili, however, Mukhtar Ablyazov was living in London, fighting extradition on charges of embezzlement and fraud, and B.T.A. Bank was under investigation in multiple jurisdictions. As usual, Trump faced no risk. That’s because he was following a familiar model in which he had zero investment, and no obligation to vet the source of funds behind his partners.
It was a different story, however, for the Silk Road Group, which had borrowed heavily from B.T.A. Even though Silk Road denied any wrongdoing, its connection to the bank tied the deal to Kazakh capital that Western regulators already considered high-risk.
Indeed, as The New Yorker reported in 2017, B.T.A. Bank’s offshore web of subsidiaries provided financing to Silk Road entities even as international courts were freezing Ablyazov’s assets. The Kazakh regime of Nursultan Nazarbayev, which had once elevated Ablyazov to power, was simultaneously pursuing him for fraud while profiting from the same opaque system of cross-border capital flight that underpinned Silk Road’s expansion. In effect, Trump’s Batumi deal inserted his brand into a cycle of money laundering that reached from Almaty to London, and from Georgia’s political elite to Manhattan’s luxury towers.
By this time, such arrangements were business as usual for Trump. The Batumi venture, financed by Kazakh-linked funds and celebrated by a Western-leaning autocrat, established the blueprint for what came next: Trump Diamond Astana, yet another never completed project, this one in the capital city of Kazakhistan, in 2012.
In Batumi, construction had never even begun, but the deal resurfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign. As Trump faced scrutiny over his Russian ties, Silk Road Group’s Giorgi Rtskhiladze re-entered the picture. According to the Mueller Report, on October 30, 2016, Rtskhiladze texted Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen: “Stopped flow of some tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so u know ….”
When questioned by investigators, Rtskhiladze said the message referred to rumored “compromising tapes” allegedly held by associates of Russia’s Crocus Group, which had helped organize Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. He later insisted the tapes were fake.
The Batumi deal, of course, was just one of many shadowy projects that showed how comfortable Trump was operating in a world of opaque money, political access, and zero accountability. What began as a handshake with Mikheil Saakashvili and a licensing contract with Silk Road Group quietly tied Trump to a web of financiers and fixers operating across Russian and Eurasian kleptocracies. In the end, it was just another chapter in transnational corruption.
Cast of Characters
Mikheil Saakashvili
Former president of Georgia and a pro-Western reformer who used the Batumi announcement to attract foreign investment.
Silk Road Group
Georgian conglomerate behind Trump Tower Batumi that pursued Western branding while drawing on financing lines linked to Kazakhstan’s B.T.A. Bank.
George Ramishvili
SRG co-founder and public face of the Batumi project, who leveraged Trump’s brand to market Georgian real estate to regional elites and offshore buyers.
Giorgi Rtskhiladze
SRG partner and deal-maker with U.S.–Eurasia networks; later surfaced in 2016 texts to Michael Cohen about rumored “tapes,” illustrating how Batumi-era intermediaries re-entered Trump’s political orbit.
B.T.A. Bank (Kazakhstan)
Major Kazakh lender whose funding streams intersected with SRG, as they were embroiled in multibillion-dollar laundering allegations and cross-border litigation.
Mukhtar Ablyazov
Former B.T.A. chairman accused of siphoning billions through offshore structures; his capital flows recur in Western real-estate vehicles, including entities noted in prior Trump SoHo reporting.
Nursultan Nazarbayev
Long-time ruler of Kazakhstan, who presided over a system where state-adjacent money moved through offshore channels that intersected with SRG’s financing ecosystem.
Michael Cohen
Trump’s personal lawyer; recipient of the Oct. 30, 2016, text from Giorgi Rtskhiladze about “stopped flow of some tapes from Russia,” a Mueller-documented episode of unverified kompromat chatter.
Aras Agalarov (Crocus Group)
Kremlin-linked developer named by Rtskhiladze as the circle where rumored “tapes” were said to exist.
Felix Sater & Tevfik Arif (Bayrock Group)
Trump partners on Trump SoHo; operated in the same Eurasia-to-U.S. capital corridors as SRG/B.T.A. flows, providing an earlier template for opaque money meeting Trump-branded real estate.
For the complete story on how Trump became a Russian asset, buy House of Trump, House of Putin, and/or American Kompromat. And don’t miss my latest book, Den of Spies!
House of Trump, House of Putin
The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia
American Kompromat
How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery
Den of Spies
Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House
Calling Batumi a resort and pearl of the Black Sea is like labeling Trenton the gem of the Delaware Valley. (Also, Kazakhstan doesn't neighbor Georgia)
If a future emerges which chooses to hold those at present to account, it will have much to say. And I think there'll be perhaps too much to say, too much to digest, too little time to place too many pieces together. Maybe this one statement of fact will be the only thing future people should remember from our present era of trumptocracy:
"In the end, it was just another chapter in transnational corruption."