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Shady Russian Network Behind Trump's Overseas Vanity Project Exposed

EXCLUSIVE: The president’s sons are trumpeting a new glitzy Trump Tower—but not the Moscow oligarch behind one of the companies they named in the deal.

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Will Neal, Scott Stedman, and Matt Bernardini
Aug 07, 2026
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Donald Trump’s sons are building a skyscraper in the Caucasus with a company co-owned by an oligarch who has shady ties to Russia, a joint investigation by PunchUp and The Newsground can reveal.

Trump Tower Tbilisi, a 70-story luxury apartment complex planned for the capital of Georgia, a former Soviet republic at the far reaches of Eastern Europe, is the latest jewel in the first family’s $2.7 billion property empire. Eric Trump, 42, posted an AI rendering on X in May, gushing that it “marks our first project in the region” and that “we are so excited to bring it to life!”

Trump’s sons have been eager to trumpet their glitzy new development in Eastern Europe. (Photo credit: X/Eric Trump/Trump Organization)

President Trump, 80, has for years waved off scrutiny of his Russia ties as a Democratic hoax. Vladimir Putin meddled in the 2016 election to help him win, and the Trump Organization chased a Trump Tower Moscow deal deep into that campaign. The FBI later pored over the post-Soviet money men behind Trump SoHo—a Manhattan condo-hotel built with the Sapir Organization, now the Trumps’ American partner on the Tbilisi development project.

One of the Georgian groups the Trump Organization named on the project, Biograpi Living, is co-owned by Paata Gamgoneishvili, 70, a Georgian-born oligarch who made his fortune in Russia, working alongside his business partner of more than 25 years, Russian investor Roland Isaev, 60. Biograpi now insists it has nothing at all to do with the deal, despite featuring prominently in the Trumps’ announcement and promoting the tower on its own social media accounts.

The pair have been decidedly quieter about who’s actually involved in the deal. (Photo credit: Tom Williams/Getty Images)

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