Trump Received Millions Of Dollars From Saudi Real Estate Developer
Donald Trump spoke at a Saudi-U.S. business investment forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in May, during the first official foreign trip of his second term.
Since winning back the presidency in November, Donald Trump's family real estate firm has been on a dealmaking spree. Since the beginning of 2024, the Trump Organization has launched and struck deals to develop luxury residential skyscrapers and golf clubs in a host of foreign countries, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. The president's latest financial disclosure, filed on Friday, reveals just how much he benefited from these projects last year.
No entity appears to have paid Trump more than Dar Al Arkan, a publicly traded Saudi real estate developer cofounded and chaired by centimillionaire Yousef Al Shelash. The firm paid the Trump Organization $21.9 million in license fees in 2024 for projects in Dubai and Oman, according to the disclosure. That's on top of $5.35 million the firm paid Trump's company between 2021 and 2022 for licensing the Trump name for a hotel, golf club and villa complex in Oman. Altogether, Forbes estimates Trump has received more than $27 million from Dar Al Arkan since 2021. (Trump also reported $2.5 million in fees from Dar Al Arkan in his August 2024 disclosure, although that covers 2023 and part of 2024, potentially overlapping with his latest filing.)
Al Shelash has cultivated a close relationship with the Trump family, calling it a "friendship" at the December launch event of the Trump Tower Jeddah, a 47-floor luxury residential skyscraper on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast. Eric Trump, the president's middle son and the executive vice president of his Trump Organization, called Al Shelash "a member of the Trump family and somebody I truly love dearly" at the same event. The Saudi real estate tycoon is wealthy in his own right, with an estimated $900 million fortune, largely held in shares of Dar Al Arkan.
Dar Al Arkan now has at least six projects in the works with the Trump Organization, spanning hotels, golf clubs, villas and luxury apartments in Dubai, Oman Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Al Shelash also told CNBC Arabia in January that his firm was working with the Trump Organization on a seventh project in Greece that has not been formally announced. Many of the projects were agreed to after Trump finished his first term as president. The golf club and villa development in Qatar, announced in April, was the first to be launched since Trump returned to the Oval Office.
The Trump Organization is pursuing deals elsewhere in Asia as well. In May, the firm announced construction had begun on a Trump-branded golf and residential project in Vietnam in partnership with Hung Yen Hospitality, a subsidiary of Vietnamese publicly traded developer Kinh Bac City Development Holding Corp. According to Trump's latest disclosure, Hung Yen paid the president's company $5 million in licensing fees in 2024. Eric Trump traveled to Vietnam in May to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for the development–which is set to cost $1.5 billion to build over four years–with Kinh Bac's chairman, Dang Thanh Tam.
Dang got his start in industrial development, building Kinh Bac into a major industrial developer with clients ranging from South Korean conglomerate LG to Apple supplier Foxconn. His and his family's shares in Kinh Bac and SaigonTel, a publicly traded telecoms and industrial development firm, are worth an estimated $160 million. In an interview with Forbes Vietnam in May, he said that his firm had started looking into building a golf course in 2023 and signed an agreement with the Trump Organization in late September, six weeks before the U.S. presidential election.
"President Donald Trump visited Vietnam twice during his first term and expressed his love for our country," Dang told Forbes Vietnam, noting that the project was speedily approved by Vietnamese authorities. 'When the conditions were right, we moved very quickly! At the same time, we understood the value of the Trump brand and had great faith in The Trump Organization and their high international standards.'
Trump is likely set to receive millions more in licensing and management fees from his firm's projects over the rest of his second term as president. Besides the deal in Vietnam and the Dar Al Arkan developments in Dubai and Oman, he has yet to declare any income from the Dar Al Arkan projects in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Not all of the Trump family's international dealings are proceeding as planned: a $500 million luxury hotel development in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, in partnership with his son-in-law Jared Kushner's private equity firm Affinity Partners and Emirati billionaire Mohamed Alabbar, was put into doubt last month when local prosecutors revealed that a cultural official had forged a document used to help the project move forward. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization has not yet responded to a request for comment on the status of the Belgrade project.
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