A Trump Tower planned for the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, is to be built on land currently part-owned by the son of a US-sanctioned Georgian leader, according to official records.
Land ownership tied to sanctioned leader’s family
The proposed 70-storey skyscraper – a joint venture between a local consortium and the Trump Organization, which is managed by the US president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump – will rise on a plot whose current registered owner is the International Charity Fund Cartu. According to official records, the Fund Cartu is solely owned by Cartu Group JSC, which in turn is 35% owned by Uta Ivanishvili, the eldest son of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire politician who serves as honorary chair of Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party and is widely recognised as the country’s de facto leader.
Uta Ivanishvili, who is not under sanctions, owned 100% of Cartu Group JSC until 2024 but reduced his shareholding to 35% when his father was subjected to US economic restrictions by the Biden administration in December 2024. The remaining 65% ownership of Cartu Group JSC cannot be publicly identified because individual shareholdings of under 5% can be held anonymously under Georgian law.
The land itself sits on a former Soviet horse-racing track known as the hippodrome in central Tbilisi. According to Temo Tsikvadze, a lawyer for Bidzina Ivanishvili, the Ivanishvili family originally owned 511,880 square metres of the site. Bidzina Ivanishvili donated the bulk of that land – 431,735 square metres – to the state and is funding the construction of a public space, Central Park, on it at his own expense. A preliminary purchase and sale agreement for the remaining 80,000 square metres was signed on 16 October 2023. Under that agreement, the future owner is a company called Central Park Avenue LLC, although only a small peripheral portion – 9,645 square metres – has been fully transferred so far. Completion of the sale of the majority of the plot is due upon payment to Cartu of the purchase price.
The Cartu Foundation was established in 1995 by Bidzina Ivanishvili and his wife, Ekaterine Khvedelidze, and has become the largest charitable foundation in Georgia, financing projects worth over $3.2 billion, including more than €1 billion invested in Kutaisi International University. In late 2020, Ivanishvili reassigned a significant portion of his Georgia-based businesses and real estate to the foundation. In January 2025, Transparency International reported that Ivanishvili and his family were transferring business assets from offshore entities to Georgian companies, potentially to take advantage of tax benefits.
Under the US sanctions regime, American citizens are prohibited from conducting business, processing payments, or providing services to Bidzina Ivanishvili personally without authorisation. However, there is an exemption relating to businesses controlled by him – a carve-out that takes on particular significance given the ownership link through his son to the land on which the Trump Tower is set to be built.
The Trump Organization announced the project in April 2026. In a press release, Eric Trump, the executive vice-president of the real estate multinational, said the company was “proud to bring this globally recognised standard of excellence to Georgia and are especially pleased to collaborate with such respected and professional developers on this project.” The architectural design is being handled by the US-based firm Gensler. The four Georgian firms – Archi Group, Biograpi Living, Blox Group and Finvest Georgia – are partnering alongside the US-based Sapir Organization, a longstanding Trump partner. None of those companies or their directors are under sanctions.
Archi Group’s founder, Ilia Tsulaia, previously served as an MP for Georgian Dream. Biograpi Living is backed by INVIA (formerly Wissol Group), a large Georgian conglomerate owned by brothers Soso and Levan Pkhakadze. Soso Pkhakadze was previously listed as an owner of Imedi TV. The Sapir Organization was founded by Tamir Sapir, a late Trump associate who, according to the research briefing, had alleged links to Kremlin spies and was subject to a past FBI investigation for money laundering and extortion. None of the Georgian companies responded to a request for comment.
Political and corruption concerns
The ties between the Trump Organization and the Ivanishvili family are likely to raise fresh concerns about potential conflicts of interest arising from the selling of the US president’s name to developers. The White House has said that “neither the president nor his family” have “ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.” It referred questions to the Trump Organization, which did not respond to requests for comment.
The Trump Organization has faced repeated conflict-of-interest accusations. In 2016, it abandoned a similar project in Batumi, Georgia, amid such concerns. More recently, it has entered a partnership with Saudi-based Dar Al Arkan to develop a $4 billion luxury resort, hotel and golf course in Muscat, Oman – a project on land owned by the Omani government. Dar Al Arkan has close ties with the Saudi government.
In Georgia, the Trump Tower project has been interpreted by Bidzina Ivanishvili’s critics as an attempt to ingratiate himself with the US president. Georgian Dream leaders have publicly trumpeted the development as a vote of confidence in the country’s economy and governance. Shalva Papuashvili, the speaker of Georgia’s parliament and a member of Georgian Dream, has said that “when Trump’s company enters Georgia under its own brand, it means it has a strong understanding of the existing environment. Naturally, Trump and his company are careful to protect the reputation they have built.”
Sandro Kevkhishvili, the anti-corruption programme manager at Transparency International Georgia, said there were grounds for concern that the project was “not merely a private business project, but rather a political one”. He pointed to three factors: the involvement of at least one businessman with affiliations to the Georgian Dream party; the fact that the land plot still belongs to the Cartu Fund, a charity organisation linked to the family of Bidzina Ivanishvili, who exercises effective control over Georgia; and that Georgian Dream-aligned propaganda channels – recently sanctioned by the United Kingdom under its Russia sanctions regime for deliberately spreading false information about the Ukraine war – are presenting this business deal “as a political victory of the ruling party”.
The UK sanctioned Georgian television channels Imedi and POSTV in February 2026 for spreading disinformation about Russia’s war in Ukraine. Transparency International UK welcomed the move as an “important and necessary step” but said it should be the “beginning” of action against “regime enablers”. Imedi TV was previously owned by Irakli Rukhadze, a US citizen with alleged ties to Bidzina Ivanishvili.
The Trump Organization’s latest project in Georgia also echoes an earlier abandoned plan from 2011. That Trump Tower in Batumi stalled and was later taken over by the Georgian Co-Investment Fund, backed by Bidzina Ivanishvili, and rebranded as Silk Tower. Now, with the Tbilisi tower, the ownership web connecting the land to the sanctioned leader’s son, the involvement of party-affiliated developers, and the political celebration of the deal, critics say the lines between private commerce and political favour have become ever harder to discern.
