Trump name, image removed from Dubai site

Damac Properties has removed the Trump name from a $6 billion golf development in Dubai in an apparent response to the uproar over the us presidential candidate’s comments about Muslims.

The Akoya development – a 42 million square foot residential and retail project being built by Damac properties said to be “inspired by the quintessential Beverly Hills lifestyle” – is a collaboration with the Trump Organization and Paramount Hotels & Resorts, and is set to include the Trump International Golf Club Dubai.

Also, pieces of letters that appeared to spell out “Trump” had been pulled down from a stone wall and left lying on the sandy ground.

Video footage showing the Akoya by Damac and Trump International Golf Club names again emblazoned across the entrance to the site in Dubailand filmed with a copy of Friday’s edition of The National was received by the paper yesterday. At a press conference in Dubai last year, Trump said the golf course and housing project would be completed in 2017 and that he would be responsible for managing the development for the next 25 years.

An advertising billboard outside the development had shown Trump in a red hat swinging a golf club against a backdrop of a lush green golf course.

An adjacent photo of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, an executive vice president for his Trump Organisation firm, was also removed from the billboard. But cozying up to the GOP front-runner risks is fraught with risks, particularly after his controversial calls to bar Muslims from entering the USA and comments to a Jewish group that some said bordered on anti-Semitic.

A billboard that had featured Donald Trump sits empty as workers prepare to replace it outside developer Damac’s Akoya development in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Friday, Dec. 11, 2015.

“We can not comment on anything related to Donald Trump”, a Damac spokesman told The National yesterday.

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday said Trump’s comments about Muslims were “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong”.

“We are assessing the legal dimension of our relationship with the Trump brand”, a statement from Kural said.

Earlier this week, a former Trump business partner in Dubai, construction billionaire Khalaf al-Habtoor, said the tycoon had wrecked his prospects for successful future collaborations in the region. “I wrote we need a successful businessman like Mr. Trump”.

Sturgeon has referred to Trump’s comments as “obnoxious and offensive”, according to the newspaper. “I reject him”, Al Habtoor was quoted as saying in the media.