A real estate company co-owned by Jared Kushner, White House senior adviser and President Trump’s son-in-law, has reportedly received foreign funds totaling $90 million from unknown offshore accounts since 2017.
The Guardian reported Mr. Kushner’s company, Cadre, has received overseas investment through a Cayman Islands Goldman Sachs vehicle while Mr. Kushner has worked as an envoy to foreign nations, according to filings and interviews.
Cadre withholds names from foreign investments via Goldman Sachs, but two sources said a majority of the money came from two accounts, one in the tax haven of The Cayman Islands while the other was located in Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Kushner resigned from his board position and sold his shares before joining the administration, but kept his stake in the company, reported at 25% and valued at about $50 million, according to financial discourse documents.
Ethics experts say this report could raise concerns about Mr. Kushner having conflicts of interests while working on official U.S. business.
“It will cause people to wonder whether he is being improperly influenced,” said Jessica Tillipman, a government ethics and anti-corruption lecturer at George Washington University Law School, told The Guardian.
This report comes after a White House whistleblower said in April that Mr. Kushner was originally denied a security clearance due to “foreign influence” and his business interests.
Mr. Kushner, Mr. Trump and other administration officials have met backlash for keeping business holdings while serving in the executive branch, which past presidents have largely avoided doing.
“The problem with Kushner — and with Trump — is that we have all these corporate entities, and often nobody knows who is invested in them and where those investors borrowed their money,” said Richard Painter, a Bush-era ethics lawyer. “We simply have no idea.”
• Bailey Vogt can be reached at bvogt@washingtontimes.com.
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