Turkish Trump: A hotel plan and a tangle of foreign ties

Before taking office, Donald J Trump pledged that his business empire would forgo new deals abroad while he was president. But as the Trump Organisation unveils a new brand of hotels, that promise is not preventing the company from bringing foreign deals home.

The company, now largely run by Trump’s eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr, has been pursuing a downtown Dallas hotel project with a real estate firm that has deep Turkish roots. The hotel, if built, would fall under the Trump Organisation’s Scion chain, a more affordable alternative to its five-star luxury line.

Alterra Worldwide, the real estate firm that would own the hotel and be partners with the Trumps, has business ties in Russia, Kazakhstan and at least two dozen other countries. Ordinarily, such international experience would be a selling point for the firm, but it is a complicating factor when dealing with Trump’s company.

A partnership with Alterra may invite the foreign entanglements and potential conflicts of interest that the company said it sought to avoid in its international dealings.

Alterra’s president, Mukemmel Sarimsakci, is a familiar face in Dallas, where he has recruited foreign investment to other developments that earned praise from city officials. Sarimsakci — who goes by Mike, or, alternatively, the “Turkish Trump” — is also listed on an expert consultant website charging $465 an hour for advice on doing business in such countries as Iran, Mexico and Nigeria. 

And he has counselled the governments of Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Sudan and Georgia, among others, on renewable energy.

His brother and longtime business partner, Yusuf Sarimsakci, has helped oversee numerous developments around the world, including the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow near the Kremlin.

A review of Alterra’s international business dealings also found that Yusuf had worked with an array of companies based in corporate secrecy and tax havens like the British Virgin Islands, a revelation from the vast leak of legal and financial documents known as the Panama Papers. At least three of the companies shared an address in the British Virgin Islands that the Treasury 

Department — unrelated to Yusuf, who has never been accused of wrongdoing — identified as housing a sanctioned North Korean entity. 

In January, then President-elect Trump and his lawyers announced his ethics plan, which included putting his business in a trust managed by his two eldest sons and an executive, while also appointing an outside ethics adviser and a chief compliance counsel to review potential deals.

The potential partnership with Sarimsakci’s firm has not yet cleared those ethical hurdles, and lawyers scrutinising the deal have privately raised concerns about some of the foreign connections, including Yusuf’s ties to Russia.

It is possible that the deal will proceed only if Sarimsakci agrees to restrictions on his partners and the funding of the deal. The vetting process is iterative, allowing the Trump Organisation to restructure deals if the ethics officer raises concerns.

In an interview, Eric Danziger, the chief executive officer of the Trump Organisation’s hotel operation, said that the company had signed letters of intent with Sarimsakci and about 30 other partners across the country, but that there were no final contracts or guarantees. 

©2017 The New York Times