Today, the letter “T” stands for Toxic rather than Truth, especially concerning anyone with prior business associations with President Trump. Justly or not, they are treated as a suspect and, therefore, subject to sloppy reporting or worse.
Our company and I personally have experienced the worst of U.S. media bias firsthand; in the last eight months, we’ve been slandered, defamed, falsely accused in corruption and put in question with the international business and financial community, embarrassed among family and friends, solely due to our association with the Trump brand. Even connecting dots is apparently unnecessary at this point – the solitary Trump dot now suffices for negative reporting.
In 2011, we signed a licensing deal for a Trump-branded residential tower in Batumi, never imagining that in December 2016 we would mutually terminate the agreement to avoid the appearance of any conflict of interest with President Trump. Nonetheless, our company, virtually unknown to Americans before December 2016 was subsequently labeled as “dangerously controversial“ even though we no longer had a deal with the Trump Organization.
This “dangerously controversial“ company, Silk Road Group is a leading example of the flourishing of private enterprise in the democratic Republic of Georgia, the country that struggled for decades to eradicate corruption inherited from the Soviet times. Silk Road employ more than 6,000 Georgians, a large number out of a population of just 3.7 million. We’ve invested heavily in iconic American brands.
Over the years, just like many successful western companies, we borrowed more than $300 million from what was then Kazakhstan’s largest commercial bank, backed by the leading U.S. financial institutions. We completed the investment projects and repaid our loans despite unavoidable challenges in 2008 due to the global economic credit crunch and meltdown and the Georgian-Russian war
While the Trump Batumi project was dropped because of President Trump’s election, President Trump’s name seems justification enough to malign Silk Road Group. But, facts matter. Facts are on our side; denigrated by media critics Batumi is a booming, vibrant seaside town with a mature luxury residential market and Silk Road is ready to deliver the tower under a different brand, but according to the vision shared by Silk Road Group and Trump organization in 2012.
A proud moment for us was in April 2012, when Donald Trump visited Batumi and hailed Georgia and the Silk Road Group for its visionary resort project that would bear his name. Shortly after, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to Batumi to praise Georgia as a loyal friend and stable democracy. She called on Georgians to conduct a fair and free election, and to allow for a peaceful transition if the opposition party prevailed over the incumbent party. Well, the opposition party prevailed and a peaceful transition occurred – a hallmark of an American-styled, stable democracy. Not for nothing, but while in Batumi both Ms. Clinton and Mr. Trump enjoyed staying at the beachfront hotel owned by Silk Road Group.
The true fact, not well reported in the United States, is that somewhere in the world, at the crossroads of Russia and the west, there is a little country with a big heart called Georgia – the one place where, you can say, that in this polarized world that we are living in, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Democrats and Republicans, have found unity. Georgia has proven to be not only a loyal friend of the United States, but a true purple nation. Our company hopes that the media will rely on the facts about Georgia and our transactions, instead of focusing on innuendos based on our dealmaking with the Trump Organization.
Mr. Ramishvili is a native of the nation of Georgia and is Chairman of Silk Road Group, based in Tbilisi, Georgia.
