Dubai developer paid Trump $12.5 million while bringing data centers to the U.S.
A Dubai-based real estate company paid President Donald Trump $12.5 million during his first year back in office while another arm of the company sought to build data centers in the U.S., supported by favorable Trump administration policy. The payments to Trump seem to relate to plans for two new Trump-branded real estate developments in the United Arab Emirates, which have not yet been announced. The eight-figure windfall for the president’s business coinciding with support from the Trump administration for the source of the payment illustrates the impact of Trump’s corruption: the explosion of the president’s wealth during his first year back in office and the spiking cost of living for everyone else may be two sides of the same coin.
DAMAC Properties, the real estate developer, has been a business partner of the Trumps since 2013. Their payments to the president’s businesses last year, revealed by Trump’s financial disclosure in June, are more than double what’s been recorded on those filings in any single year going back to Trump’s first disclosure in 2015.
The dramatic jump was driven by payments from two subsidiaries of DAMAC Properties, DAMAC Properties Investment LLC and DAMAC Sky View Real Estate LLC, to new Trump companies that appear to be related to unannounced developments in Abu Dhabi: DT Marks Al Raha Beach LLC and DT Marks Abu Dhabi LLC.
At the same time that those new real estate deals were apparently being planned, another arm of the DAMAC Group, DAMAC Digital, was planning its first data center developments in the U.S., with support from the incoming administration. Two weeks before taking office, President Trump appeared alongside DAMAC chair Hussain Sajwani at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, where Sajwani announced that his company would spend $20 billion to develop data centers in the U.S., and Trump suggested he could secure “expedited reviews” for the projects.
DAMAC Digital is currently working to build data centers in Canton, Ohio and Edgerton, Kansas. Those communities have expressed concerns about the developments related to noise, pollution and economic impacts, echoing national concerns about data centers that also include rising utility costs and electrical grid usage. Corporate registration documents suggest DAMAC may also be planning a development in Illinois. A press release from January 2025 named six additional states as targets.
In July 2025, Trump signed an executive order, “Accelerating federal permitting of data center infrastructure.” On the same day the order was released, DT Marks Al Raha Beach LLC was formed in Delaware. The other new company was formed ten days after Trump’s inauguration. DAMAC Properties paid each company $5 million in licensing fees through its subsidiaries.
After Trump first won the presidency in 2016, Sajwani, DAMAC’s chair, sought to bolster his financial relationship with the incoming U.S. president by offering Trump $2 billion in new foreign deals. Trump turned it down, citing conflict of interest concerns. This term, nearly two dozen Trump-branded real estate projects are being developed in foreign countries while Trump serves as president, resulting in an explosion of foreign revenue, including more than $32 million from projects in the UAE last year.