London - Donald Trump’s company pulled out of a proposed
$250 million tower project in the Georgian Black Sea resort town of Batumi, the
latest effort by the US president-elect to defuse charges that his global
businesses will cause conflicts of interest once he enters the White House.
The Trump Organisation and its local partner in Georgia,
the Silk Road Group, said in a joint e-mailed statement that they’ve decided
“to formally end the development of Trump Tower, Batumi.” The project, a
47-story residential condominium, was announced in 2012 by Trump and
then-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Silk Road said it will go ahead on
its own with a luxury tower in the town, once dubbed the Monte Carlo of the
Caucasus by Trump.
The organisation announced last month it was ending real-estate
projects in Brazil and Azerbaijan, in what Executive Vice President Alan Garten
described as “housecleaning” ahead of Trump’s January 20 inauguration.
Political opponents have said his business interests could prejudice US foreign
policy - especially in the former Soviet Union, given Trump’s professed
admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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The prospect of a US-Russian thaw is of special concern
to Georgia, a close American ally that still aspires to NATO membership. The
country, at the crossroads of key energy routes to Europe, fought and lost a
war with Russia in 2008 over breakaway provinces, and about a fifth of its
territory remains under the control of pro-Russian forces.
The Trump Tower in Batumi was widely assumed to have been
shelved when Saakashvili lost power in 2013 and was later stripped of his
Georgian citizenship. But Giorgi Ramishvili, Silk Road’s founder, said a month
ago that it was still on track.
Ramishvili, contacted by phone today, didn’t elaborate on
why it’s been abandoned now, and also declined to comment on whether he’ll be
attending Trump’s inauguration.
BLOOMBERG