Jared Kushner and his Affinity Partners have been under the cloud due to the kind of investment it drew from overseas financiers, including the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund. As part of ongoing investigations, Senate Finance Committee Chair Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.) sent a letter to the chief legal officer of the firm on Tuesday, stating that it may have been designed as a workaround for foreign governments to pay officials of Donald Trump without any disclosure.
Questionable Terms: Wyden sent the letter, seeking additional information from Affinity Partners regarding business dealings with foreign investors, including foreign governments. The senator noted that over the last three years, the Kushner-led firm has collected about $157 million in management fees from foreign investors while generating no return on investment for its clients.
The payment included $87 million paid directly from the government of Saudi Arabia. “Affinity's failure to deploy capital in a timely fashion while charging excessive fees has reinforced my view that Affinity is likely part of a compensation scheme involving U.S. political figures designed to circumvent the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” the senator said.
Affinity is also guaranteed to collect another $50 million of additional fees, including $50 million from the Saudi PIF, until August, and the terms of the contract provided for renegotiating their investment agreements or withdrawing their funds from Affinity once the five-year investment period ends in Aug. 2026, he added.
“The terms of Affinity's agreements with foreign clients create conflicts of interest involving members of a Presidential family that are unprecedented in size and scope,” Wyden said. Kushner is married to Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump.
No Returns: Affinity hasn’t generated any returns for the hundreds of millions of dollars in investment management fees it collected from its investors, Wyden said. “Affinity has been slow to invest its clients' funds and has failed to make investments at a pace commensurate with the amount of fees it is charging,” he said.
The senator also said the committee raised suspicions about why the “deep-pocketed Saudi and Qatari governments would turn to a relatively novice Kushner-led firm for investment advice were it not for a desire to influence the Trump family.”
“These facts suggest the Saudi government's decision to place $2 billion with Affinity is the result of an effort by Crown Prince Bin Salman to curry favor with Kushner and Ivanka Trump or reward them for favorable U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia during the first Donald Trump administration,” Wyden said in the letter.
The senator also noted that Kushner and several former U.S. government officials were part of Affinity and they due to their roles had access to the highest levels of classified information and military secrets. “Since 100% of Affinity's outside capital and streams of income come from foreign sources, primarily sovereign wealth funds, I am concerned that Affinity's private investment funds are being exploited by former U.S. government officials as a loophole to receive compensation from foreign governments without disclosing these payments under FARA,” he said.
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