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Article: Trump Organization Eyes Transylvania Golf Course Deal

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/world/europe/trump-romania-transylvania-apartments-golf-course.html

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2026-03-20 09:01

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Trumps, on a Deal-Making Spree, Turn Next to Transylvania
The president’s company is eyeing a site for a golf course and luxury apartments. Will a huge landfill and a troubled project history stand in the way?
The Trump Organization has for decades planted the family name in places synonymous with business and luxury tourism: Manhattan, Los Angeles, Honolulu. Its global ambitions include Australia, Bali and the Maldives.
Now, President Trump’s family business is setting its sights on Transylvania, the central Romanian home to literature’s Count Dracula. The company has selected, records and interviews show, a site alongside one of the region’s biggest landfills and a former medical waste dump.
The project, which has yet to be announced, would revive a stalled real estate development in the Romanian city of Cluj that had been tainted by government corruption. It would put Mr. Trump’s name on luxury apartments and a golf course not far from an informal encampment where Roma people have been effectively exiled to live beside toxic garbage.
The deal is the latest in a rapid global expansion of the Trump brand. During the president’s first term, the company swore off new deals abroad. It made no such promise when he retook office. Instead, the firm has capitalized on the president’s popularity in particular parts of the world, announcing new licensing deals granting use of the Trump name, especially in Persian Gulf countries.
Mr. Trump’s family business has collected ample cash as a result. While the firm’s finances are private, Mr. Trump’s financial disclosures indicate that the company’s international licensing deals alone brought in tens of millions of dollars in 2024, the last year for which information is available. The company has since announced a string of new projects, and the family has profited from cryptocurrency ventures.
The Romania deal, unlike others announced recently, poses no obvious conflicts of interest for Mr. Trump’s foreign policy. But it is nonetheless a deal that, in Mr. Trump’s first term, the firm would not have pursued by its own standards.
The deal inserts the company into a legal dispute between the project’s former partners, as well as into controversies over the landfill and whether the Roma people deserve to be resettled. Developers have ignored those issues for years, activists say.
“They’re trying to sell people illusions,” said Alex Fechete, a housing activist who represents members of the Roma settlement. “They show the glass buildings and they don’t show the ghetto, or how close it is to the garbage dump.”
“We are incredibly excited about our projects in Bucharest and Cluj, which mark our first ventures in Romania,” a spokesperson for the Trump Organization said, referring to already announced plans for a Trump Tower in the capital. “The Trump Organization looks forward to bringing truly iconic buildings to these great cities — buildings that will reflect the highest standards of design and quality while redefining each city’s dynamic skyline.”
Real estate deals, of course, can fall apart, such as the planned Trump Tower in Belgrade, Serbia, which died last year amid a corruption inquiry.
But the company’s interest appears undeterred by the inauspicious locale or zoning challenges. A Trump Organization rendering shows an apartment complex standing more than twice as high as regulations currently allow. A local partner has circulated a sales brochure.
In December, a shell company in Delaware popped up with the name DT Marks Cluj — a variation on the company names that the Trump family has used to collect payments for international projects.
To navigate the thorny details and local politics, the Trump Organization is working with a pair of allies. The first is the local developer SDC Properties, which has begun applying for permits. Stefan Berciu, the company’s head, said in an interview that contracts had been signed and that the Trumps would announce the details soon.
The second is Avram Gal, a Romanian political operative who has been helping facilitate parts of the deal and has a Trump-like flare himself. Mr. Gal started a steakhouse advertising “Romania’s most expensive burger” — a sandwich decorated in gold leaf that sold for 6,200 euros (about $7,100). A local leader of the center-right Social Democratic Party, he has advised several senior Romanian officials, including the defense minister. Mr. Gal has also been charged with and acquitted of influence-peddling.
“I am involved in this project as a friend of the family, not a consultant,” Mr. Gal said.
As to why the Trumps have chosen Romania, multiple people claim credit for recruiting the family. Some point to Mr. Trump’s popularity there. In a recent Gallup International poll, more than half of respondents in the country viewed his presidency favorably.
By the dawn of Mr. Trump’s second term, plans to do business in Romania began taking shape. Mr. Berciu flew to Washington for the president’s inauguration. Alongside him was Mr. Gal, who, from the stands, posted videos promoting herbal teas for weight loss. Mr. Gal and Mr. Berciu attended the inaugural ball. They later traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Eric Trump, the president’s son who runs the Trump Organization.
The proposed Cluj site, in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, is more than a four-hour drive northwest of Bran Castle, the picturesque tourist destination better known as Dracula’s Castle.
The makeshift Roma settlement, called Pata Rat, has existed for decades. Residents have spent their days sorting through heaps of trash in the landfill for items of value. Adding to the settlement, the local government has forcibly relocated families there.
Today, an estimated 3,000 people live in Pata Rat. In summer especially, the stench of garbage can be strong.
It is there — uphill from the settlement and packs of wandering dogs, and alongside a military base — that an SDC Properties sales brochure places the Trump-branded golf course and luxury apartments.
Adrian Gurzau, a former Romanian politician who was convicted of corruption, said he hatched a plan, around 2022, to build on the land. He envisioned a commercial and residential complex with a heliport and a funicular link to the airport.
He recruited Mr. Berciu of SDC as his partner. They discussed whether there was enough demand for a golf course, or whether a zip line or an adventure park might be more suitable.
Even then, Mr. Gurzau said, he suggested bringing the Trumps into the project. “For a building like this, you need icing on the cake,” he said in an interview. “Branding to make it shine.”
The site, Mr. Gurzau said, was at risk of landslides. “But we had information from the environmental authorities that the only impact from the landfills was the bad smell,” he said.
Investors bought in, and construction crews laid the foundation for the first building of what was to be called Transylvania Smart City.
But before long, prosecutors opened a corruption inquiry focused on the project. And in 2023, a prominent former Romanian minister associated with the project was convicted of bribery and money laundering. The site soon became all but abandoned.
While Mr. Gurzau might have dreamed of a Trump development, a Romanian man who was then sitting on the board of Trump Tower Chicago said that he had helped get things moving. That former board member, Onisim Dorneanu, said he approached the Trump Organization in 2023 and suggested a project in Cluj.
Mr. Dorneanu has since sued the Trump Organization, claiming it defrauded investors in Chicago. He has no part in the Romania deal.
Mr. Gurzau, too, is locked in a legal dispute, this one over the property the Trumps are eyeing. He claims that Mr. Berciu, his former partner, iced him out of the development in the midst of a dispute over debts and teamed up with the Trumps.
Mr. Berciu said the project would move forward only on land where the ownership was clear. “Trump can’t afford it, and neither can we, to build on other people’s land,” he said.
Rebecca R. Ruiz is an investigative reporter for The Times based in London.
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