*** Report: Jared Kushner’s $2 Billion Saudi Check Appears Even More Comically Corrupt Than Previously Thought ***
“The reason this smells so bad is that there is all sorts of evidence he did not receive this on the merits.”
Back in April, The New York Times reported that Jared Kushner’s four years of Saudi ass-kissing and murder-excusing had paid off in the form of a $2 billion investment from the kingdom‘s sovereign wealth fund to his newly formed private equity firm. That struck a lot of people—ethics officials among them—as pretty shady given that far from having impressed would-be clients with his investing prowess, the panel that performs due diligence for the Saudi fund concluded that no one in their right mind would give the former first son-in-law a dime.
Among other concerns, the panel noted that management was “inexperience[d],” that the kingdom would be responsible for “the bulk of the investment and risk,” that its fee seemed “excessive,” and that the firm’s operations were “unsatisfactory in all aspects.” Given those reservations, it warned that the country’s Public Investment Fund should stay far, far away from Kushner’s firm—a recommendation that was overturned by the fund’s board, which happens to be led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, i.e., the guy who approved a plan to kidnap, kill, and dismember a journalist via bone saw and benefited from Kushner’s unwavering support within the White House and reported insistence that the prince could “survive the outrage just as he [had] weathered past criticism.”
(Again, just so it‘s abundantly clear, the “outrage” and “criticism” were over a Saudi dissident and U.S. resident being chopped up into pieces.)
So, it wasn’t that difficult for people to put two and two together and infer that Kushner’s firm seemingly got $2 billion to invest—and at least $25 million to pocket regardless of performance!—as a thank-you for being so good to a human rights-abusing autocrat. And a new story from the Times suggests, somehow, even further shadiness than that.
Where Wall Street, Washington, and Silicon Valley meet.
The paper’s Kate Kelly and David Kirkpatrick report that “shortly before the 2020 election,” Kushner unveiled a government-sponsored program dubbed the Abraham Fund, which the Trump administration said would raise $3 billion for projects around the Middle East, capitalizing on the Abraham Accords, the diplomatic agreements normalizing relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. As part of that endeavor, Kushner and then Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin “crisscrossed the Middle East in the final months of the administration on trips that included trying to raise money for the project.” But according to the Times:
It was little more than talk: With no accounts, employees, income or projects, the fund vanished when Mr. Trump left office…. [The fund] was overseen by Adam Boehler, at the time the head of a newly formed development finance agency and a college roommate of Mr. Kushner’s. Mr. Boehler joined Mr. Mnuchin on his Gulf visit in October and accompanied Mr. Kushner to Qatar and Saudi Arabia in December. Officials said the fund would invest in poorer countries that joined the accords, and its first projects were said to include upgrading checkpoints into Israel from the Palestinian territories and building a gas pipeline between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Neither project went anywhere. Nor did the efforts to enlist Gulf money.
In January last year, Mr. Boehler announced the only publicly disclosed investment in the Abraham Fund: a “commitment of up to $50 million” from Uzbekistan, a relatively low-income country. Uzbek officials said at the time that they sought to reduce poverty and foster regional cooperation. Long criticized for human rights abuses, Uzbekistan had begun a lobbying push in Washington to improve its image after a leadership change; its new president also gave Mr. Trump a $2,950 silver replica of a historic building and his wife a $4,200 bed cover. But no money for the short-lived Abraham Fund was ever delivered.
Yet while the countries (and the people who live there) that were supposedly going to benefit from the Abraham Fund never saw any money materialize, Kushner and Mnuchin would soon be raking in the cash. As the Times notes, Mnuchin’s newly formed commercial enterprise “received $500 million commitments from the Emiratis, Kuwaitis and Qataris,” plus $1 billion from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, within a few short months of his time at the Treasury Department ending. And while Kushner took slightly longer to get things off the ground, his new firm “reached an agreement for a $2 billion investment from the Saudis six months after he left government.” And while we would never suggest anything about this looks less than totally aboveboard, others seem to believe it might be!
…an examination of the two men’s travels toward the end of the Trump presidency raises other questions about whether they sought to exploit official relationships with foreign leaders for private business interests. In the weeks after the election, Mr. Kushner made three trips to the Middle East, the last for a Jan. 5 summit in Saudi Arabia with leaders of the Gulf monarchies. Mr. Mnuchin that day began a tour through the region that was planned to include private meetings with the heads of the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait—all future investors.
The path from public service to private investing is well trod by members of both parties. The two Treasury secretaries under President Barack Obama later went to Wall Street. But Mr. Kushner and Mr. Mnuchin stand out, ethics experts said, for the speed of their pivots and for the sums they raised from foreign rulers they had recently dealt with on behalf of the United States…. Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies government ethics, said each fund raised different issues. For Mr. Kushner, she said, “the reason this smells so bad is that there is all sorts of evidence he did not receive this on the merits.” But for Mr. Mnuchin, who was a successful investor before entering government, the biggest question is whether he was burnishing relationships as Treasury secretary that he knew would be useful to him in the near future, Ms. Clark said. “If he was, that is an abuse of his office,” she said. “I don’t know if it is criminal, but it is certainly corrupt.”
Kushner declined the Times’ request for comment. A spokesman for Mnuchin denied to the Times that he had solicited investments while working in government and claimed, without providing specifics, that some of the details of the story were inaccurate. The spokesperson added that the firm has diverse backers, “including U.S. insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, family offices and other institutional investors.”
From <
vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/…>
