UAE-Backed Investor Takes 49% Stake in Trump-Linked Crypto Firm for $500M
A United Arab Emirates-backed investment vehicle quietly agreed to buy half of Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency startup linked to President Donald Trump, days before he returned to the White House, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Aryam Investments 1, an Abu Dhabi entity backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, signed an agreement to buy a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial in January 2025 for $500 million, the Journal said, citing documents and people familiar with the matter.
Half of that money was paid up front, with $187 million going to entities controlled by the Trump family, and tens of millions more to entities tied to the entrepreneurs, including relatives of U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, according to the report.
The agreement was reportedly signed by Eric Trump. According to the Journal, the deal was not made public after the Trump family's stake in Liberty International fell sharply.
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Tahnon's ambitions are growing after Trump's election.
The brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates and the country's national security adviser, Tahnon has been central to Abu Dhabi's push to become a global leader in artificial intelligence. Under the Biden administration, efforts to protect US-made advanced AI chips have been limited by concerns that sensitive technology could reach China, particularly through companies like the G42.
Those efforts have intensified following Trump's election. Tahnon met several times with Trump and senior US officials within months, and within months the administration had committed to allowing hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips to the United Arab Emirates each year.
According to the Journal, G42 executives will manage Aryam Investments 1 and hold board seats on World Liberty as part of the deal, making Aryam the startup's largest foreign shareholder. Weeks before the announcement of the US-UAE chip framework, MGX, another Tahnon-led firm, used World Freedom's stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment into Binance.
Freedom of the World and the White House are said to have done nothing wrong. A spokeswoman told the Journal that President Trump was not involved in the deal and had no influence on US policy.
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World Liberty Faces US Call for Investigation.
Last year, Democratic senators called on US officials to investigate links between World Freedom Financial's token sale and sanctioned foreign actors. In a November letter to the Justice Department and the Treasury, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reid cited claims that WLFI's governance tokens were purchased through blockchain addresses linked to North Korea's Lazar Group, as well as entities with ties to Russia and Iran.
The controversy is compounded by WWFI's ownership structure, which puts entities connected to the Trump family in control of most of the token's revenue. Lawmakers argue that this creates a direct conflict of interest, as most of the proceeds from token sales go to the president's family.
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