The Trump family business and its Saudi-based development partner, Dar Al Arkan, have a new project drawing on two of the family’s most successful moneymaking enterprises: cryptocurrency trading and real estate development.
The pair announced on Monday the latest real estate deal to which the Trump Organization would license its name: a luxury hotel in the Maldives with a new funding structure allowing a broader group of investors to buy into the deal.
Unlike other Trump-branded projects that the partners have in the works, the new venture will involve “real estate tokenization,” allowing investors to purchase fractional interests in the property via digital tokens that can be bought and sold on a blockchain platform.
The deal was announced just as President Trump prepares to host Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, in Washington this week.
Since Mr. Trump returned to office, his family and associated businesses have trumpeted new ventures abroad involving billions of dollars. Cryptocurrency has proved particularly lucrative.
In the case of the hotel project, selling digital tokens may allow the developers to take on less traditional debt, in the form of bank loans, to finance the construction. That at least is the plan, if there are enough cryptocurrency enthusiasts willing to buy into the Trump family’s latest project.
The model could make it much harder to track the identities of investors in the project, opening up yet more opportunities for foreign players to try to help enrich the Trump family and its business partners.
The Trump family’s partner in the project is the Dubai-based Dar Global, which is majority-owned by Dar Al Arkan, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest private real-estate developers.
In the Maldives, Dar Global plans to construct 80 of what it is calling “ultra luxury” villas that will sit on the ocean and can be reached with a 25-minute speedboat ride from Malé, the capital of the island nation in the Indian Ocean.
“This development will not only redefine luxury in the region but also set a new benchmark for innovation in real estate investment through tokenization,” Eric Trump, the president’s son, said in a statement issued Monday announcing the plan.
The Maldives project is one of at least eight Trump Organization projects with Dar Global, with the others planned in Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Separately, the Trump Organization has also been exploring a Saudi government real estate deal to form yet another partnership for the pair, The New York Times reported this month.
As the Trump Organization’s key partner abroad, Dar Global has leveraged that partnership to expand around the world. This year, the company opened its first office in the United States, in Trump Tower in New York.
Neither the Trump Organization nor Dar Global responded to a request seeking further details on the Maldives project.
In most of these deals, the Trump family lends its name to the project and is paid a multimillion-dollar fee, along with a cut of the money the developers make on sales associated with the project. The Trump family business generally does not invest its own money into building the project, and instead is effectively selling its brand to help drive up prices on the units.
President Trump’s recent financial disclosure form showed more than $20 million in payments associated with Dar Al Arkan deals last year alone.
This fall, Eric Trump talked up the concept of digital tokens, celebrating its minimization of banks, as well as the opportunity it could offer Trump supporters globally.
“We have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds — and probably billions — of people that love our family around the world and love what we stand for as a brand,” the president’s son said in an interview with the crypto news site CoinDesk last month. He added that the brand’s appeal to supporters was “in terms of, maybe being outspoken politically, in terms of the kind of luxury by which we build, and the fight that we have, and being a little politically incorrect, and often being on the front of these curves.”
“So many people would love to have a piece of something that we do,” he said.
Rebecca R. Ruiz is an investigative reporter for The Times based in London.
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