When President-elect Donald J. Trump called Hussain Sajwani to the lectern at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday to promise a $20 billion investment in the United States, it was a moment for the Dubai developer to savor. For more than a decade, his company, DAMAC Properties, has helped generate millions for the Trump Organization through a partnership in the Middle East.
Those ties appear to have helped open a broad opportunity for Mr. Sajwani as he moves to diversify his empire into the multibillion-dollar market of building data centers needed to meet fast-growing demands for cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
“For the last four years, we’ve been waiting for this moment,” Mr. Sajwani said on the stage. “We’re very, very excited now with his leadership and his open strategy and policy to encourage businesses to come to the U.S.”
The announcement deepens Mr. Trump’s ties with Mr. Sajwani. But it also highlights what critics say are conflicts of interest as Mr. Trump continues to hold on to his real estate business as he prepares for a second term in the White House.
What does DAMAC do?
DAMAC Properties is part of the DAMAC Group, one of the biggest developers in Dubai, a city in the United Arab Emirates known for its larger-than-life real estate projects, like a palm tree-shaped island and the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper.
Mr. Sajwani, who is sometimes called the Donald of Dubai, leveraged his company into a major player in the Middle East’s luxury real estate market with acquisitions and projects starting in the mid-1990s, when Dubai began allowing foreigners to buy property there.
In 2002, he founded DAMAC Properties to build luxury towers along Dubai’s waterfront that quickly sold out. Mr. Sajwani sealed branding deals with Versace, Fendi and other fashion houses for his properties.
But the company also faced lawsuits in 2010, including one by a German investor who claimed that certain properties had not been delivered on time. That suit was rejected by a Dubai court. In 2011, DAMAC settled three disputes with Egypt over investments there, including one in which a Cairo court had sentenced Mr. Sajwani to jail in absentia.
On its website, the company promotes luxury villas, apartments and hotels from Saudi Arabia to London. During his remarks at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, Mr. Sajwani said DAMAC had delivered 47,000 homes and had 33,000 more in the pipeline.
DAMAC said in a news release Tuesday that it was also planning a condo project in Miami valued at an estimated $1 billion, and that it “continues to look for strategic real estate opportunities in the U.S.”
What is DAMAC’s link to Mr. Trump?
In 2013, Mr. Sajwani teamed up with the Trump family to build the first Trump-branded golf course in the Middle East. Mr. Trump agreed to manage a golf course as part of a DAMAC development.
Under the deals, the Trump Organization licenses the Trump name to DAMAC, which paid Mr. Trump $2 million to $10 million even before the golf courses were built, according to financial disclosure forms filed in May 2016. In 2017, Mr. Trump earned $141,433 in management fees from the deals, according to his financial disclosure from that year.
The Trump International Golf Club opened in 2017, during Mr. Trump’s first term, and is the centerpiece of DAMAC Hills, a gated complex of luxury homes selling for up to $4 million each.
A second Trump-affiliated golf course that DAMAC intended to build inside a resort has been delayed. The project drew scrutiny in 2018 when DAMAC tapped a company controlled by the Chinese government to build part of it.
Mr. Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, attended the wedding of Mr. Sajwani’s daughter in 2018, and during Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Sajwani was a familiar face at Mar-a-Lago. Last week, he attended a New Year’s Eve celebration, posting a picture on X of himself next to Mr. Trump and Elon Musk.
Why is DAMAC investing in U.S. data centers?
If Mr. Trump has profited greatly from his dealings with DAMAC, Mr. Sajwani is set to benefit from his yearslong investment in the president-elect.
In 2021, Mr. Sajwani set up a digital unit, Edgnex Data Centres, a subsidiary of DAMAC, to meet surging global demand for data centers.
Edgnex has sought to expand rapidly across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and has operations in 10 countries, including Saudi Arabia, which has trained its sights on becoming a dominant player in A.I.
North America has been a blank spot in Edgnex’s portfolio — until Mr. Trump’s announcement that Mr. Sajwani would pour “at least” $20 billion into the United States.
Edgnex said it would develop data centers in eight states, including in Texas and Indiana, and is aiming to create data processing capacity that could eclipse projects built by Microsoft and Amazon.
Mr. Trump said he would use the government’s powers once in office to grant DAMAC “expedited reviews” of any federal environmental questions that might emerge, a benefit that Mr. Trump added would be offered to any company planning to invest $1 billion in the United States.