Watchdogs Question India's Reliance Industries' £7.7M Trump 'Fee' After String of US Government Wins Worth Billions

A £7.7 million ($10 million) payment from India's largest private company to Donald Trump's business, for a project that has yet to materialise, is drawing sharp scrutiny from ethics watchdogs.

The Washington-based watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) published an investigation on 13 March 2026 documenting that Reliance Industries, the Indian conglomerate owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, paid a £7.7 million ($10 million) 'development fee' to the Trump Organisation in 2024 for a brand licence agreement on an unnamed Mumbai property, a project that has yet to be publicly announced by either party.

The £7.7m Fee That Has No Visible Project Behind It

Trump's 2025 financial disclosure, released by the US Office of Government Ethics and reviewed by CREW, lists a £7.7 million ($10 million) 'development fee' paid by Reliance 4IR Realty Development, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, to the Trump Organisation for a 'licence agreement' on a project 'to be located in Mumbai.' The fee made up a significant portion of the at least £66.6 million ($87 million) Trump reported earning from foreign properties in 2024. According to CREW's analysis, Trump's total foreign income in 2024 hit a record of at least £77.5 million ($101 million), more than double the previous year's total.

The Trump Organisation's own website, in its section listing international developments 'coming soon,' makes no mention of Mumbai. The company has issued no press release about the development.

Reliance Industries has declined to comment on the payment, and neither party has publicly identified which specific Mumbai project the fee is linked to. CREW noted pointedly: 'It is unclear what Reliance has received in exchange for its £7.7 million ($10 million) payment two years ago.'

India has become the country most deeply enmeshed with Trump's foreign business interests. CREW's foreign development tracker shows eight Trump projects currently in development there, more than any other nation, six of which were announced to local media the day after Trump's 2024 election victory.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the Reliance disclosure, noted that the Trump Organisation's foreign licensing and development fees jumped from £6.3 million ($8.2 million) in 2023 to £34.2 million ($44.6 million) in 2024, a fivefold increase in a single year.

Two Government Wins in Eight Weeks — and the Questions They Raise

On 13 February 2026, Reuters confirmed that the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control had issued Reliance a general licence allowing it to purchase Venezuelan crude oil directly, circumventing the sanctions that had barred it from doing so since March 2025. The licence authorises the purchase, export, and refining of Venezuelan-origin oil. According to trade sources cited by Reuters, Reliance had applied for the permit the previous month.

The timing carries context. Trump had removed a 25% punitive tariff on India in the period immediately preceding the licence grant, and publicly said that India would 'buy more oil from the US and potentially Venezuela.' Trade analysts noted that Indian refiners, including Reliance, simultaneously began avoiding Russian oil for April delivery, a shift that aligned with Washington's preference as part of broader trade deal negotiations.

Bloomberg reported on 11 March 2026 that Reliance had 'gone from Trump foe to friend,' noting this represented a reversal of what had been an historically strained relationship between the two parties.

Then, on 10 March 2026, Trump posted on Truth Social announcing that Reliance was backing a new oil refinery to be built at the Port of Brownsville, Texas. 'THIS IS A HISTORIC $300 BILLION DOLLAR DEAL — THE BIGGEST IN US HISTORY,' Trump wrote, calling it the 'FIRST new US Oil Refinery in 50 YEARS.' The developer, America First Refining, confirmed Reliance as the investor.

Expert Scepticism Over the Refinery — and What Reliance Has Confirmed

Andy Lipow, head of consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates, told the Houston Chronicle he did not know 'what to make of it, because there's no statement out of Reliance.' Inside Climate News confirmed that Reliance Industries did not respond to requests for comment on the project.

The refinery project itself predates the current announcement by a decade. Permits for the facility, previously developed under the name Element Fuels Holdings, whose website now redirects to America First Refining, have been extended three times by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

A TCEQ staff letter, reviewed by Inside Climate News, confirms this is the 'third and final' extension allowed under Texas state law, with construction required to begin by 19 October 2027 or the permit becoming 'automatically void.' A planned groundbreaking in Q2 2026 has been cited by both the developer and the Port of Brownsville.

CREW's broader concerns extend beyond any single project. Its February 2026 report on Trump's foreign income estimated that Trump is on course to earn more than £307 million ($400 million) from overseas real estate during his second term alone, an unprecedented figure in modern US presidential history.

The organisation has documented similar patterns in Vietnam, where the government moved to fast-track a Trump development despite legal objections, and in Serbia, where officials used 'extraordinary measures and alleged fraud' to advance a Trump project. CREW's position is that the structure of Trump's continued business interest, while he holds office, creates irreconcilable conflicts of interest, concerns that neither the Trump Organisation nor Reliance has addressed publicly.

A £7.7 million ($10 million) fee for a Mumbai property nobody has seen, paid to a sitting president's company by a conglomerate that has since received two major US government wins, is precisely the kind of arithmetic that transparency laws were designed to make visible, and that watchdogs argue this administration has made a point of ignoring.