Latest news with #WorldLibertyFinancial
Indian Express
12 hours ago
- Business
- Indian Express
Inside Track: Pak's PR Plus
Pakistan Crypto Council CEO Bilal bin Saqib is modest in claiming that Pakistan is a victim of bad PR. His country has an old tradition of outdoing India in the hospitality sector for influential state guests. For decades, Indian ambassadors have complained about their pitiful entertainment allowances compared to the lavish budgets of their Pakistani counterparts. The Pakistanis leave no stone unturned in entertaining VVIP foreign guests, from commandeering heritage monuments for throwing dinners to organising falconry and hunting parties of protected species for Middle East royalty. The Pakistani intelligentsia with aristocratic bloodlines and Oxbridge backgrounds have significant clout in Western liberal circles, including think tanks, NGOs, universities and diplomatic parties. Modi's India, painted by Pakistan as an illiberal democracy encouraging Hindutva zealots, is not a favourite in such company. (Ironically, during Operation Sindoor dissenting views within India reflected its plurality, while the Pakistani intelligentsia spoke in one voice while backing its military dictatorship against terror sponsorship charges). One biased American legacy newspaper judged the military success of the two countries in the four-day war at par, even while displaying satellite imagery demonstrating extensive damage to Pakistani air bases and displaying no evidentiary proof of major destruction on the Indian side. In a bid to counter false propaganda, a senior official recently gave Indian MPs on the diplomatic outreach tours a breakdown of the relatively minor Indian losses. Realisation has dawned that in the absence of official information, Pakistani, Turkish and Chinese WhatsApp messages went to town spreading misinformation. When Trump was elected, we assumed that he had a soft corner for India as a counter to China, particularly as some key Trump appointees have India ties. But his recent statements on India appear rather unfriendly, possibly because India, unlike Pakistan, is unwilling to give Trump credit for brokering a ceasefire and accepting tariff rates as a bargaining chip. The Modi government has finalised at great expense a former Trump aide as a lobbyist for India. Pakistan has a different strategy. In January, Donald Trump Junior's college friend and hunting buddy Gentry Beach was hosted by the Pakistan PM in both Islamabad and Dubai, and was reportedly promised lucrative deals for the Trump business empire. Beach also visited Bangladesh and Turkey. Just after the April 22 terrorist attack, Pakistan signed a crypto deal with World Liberty Financial, a crypto currency firm in which the Trump family has a major stake. Apart from Trump's mercurial temperament and business interests, another reason for the slight trust deficit in Indo-US relations is that Trump has yet to appoint key officials to liaise with India. A US ambassador to India has not been named. The post of US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia is vacant. Ricky Gill, a relatively junior officer in the National Security Council, is presently the only White House official directly dealing with India. Supriya Sule's appointment as the head of one of India's diplomatic outreach teams and her recent meeting with PM Modi is significant. Sule was always the stumbling block in the NCP aligning with the BJP. Even when Ajit Pawar and most of the party defected, Sule persuaded Sharad Pawar to stay back. Pawar Senior desires a Cabinet berth for his daughter at the Centre. Modi would welcome the support of Pawar's 8 MPs. He realises Pawar's few MLAs are keen to join the government since they complain that their constituencies are starved of central funding because they are in the Opposition. In a new twist, Ajit no longer wants his uncle's NCP to merge with his wing of the party. Ajit's wife is still smarting from her defeat to Sule in the Baramati Lok Sabha poll. A pragmatic solution to get around Ajit's opposition is for Pawar's NCP to join the NDA directly. The BJP is treading cautiously since Sule has a history of persuading her father to run from the altar just when the marriage is about to be formalised. Shashi Tharoor's selection as head of one of the parliamentary teams to present India's case on the war on terrorism is masterful on two counts. Tharoor, who met Prime Minister Modi before his foreign tours, is the most seasoned, skilled and well-networked diplomat in the group, and is already making waves. Congresspersons sourly question his motives in unequivocally applauding the Modi government. Tharoor confessed to a friend it is one thing to be ignored by Rahul Gandhi, but when the entire Congress unit in Kerala, taking its cue from K C Venugopal, gives him the short shrift, what future does he have in the party?
Express Tribune
2 days ago
- Business
- Express Tribune
Bitcoin Strategic Reserve
Listen to article Pakistan's recent announcement of a state-backed Bitcoin Strategic Reserve is the latest in a series of major shifts in global crypto policy and is earning simultaneous praise and consternation. Though the policy change comes on the heels of the US setting up its own strategic crypto reserve — the largest in the world — the US reserve has been populated with only recovered and seized crypto, and the country has been clear that it does not intend to get involved in mining. Pakistan, on the other hand, must learn from the experiences of El Salvador, which became the first country to fully legalise crypto in 2021 and the first to have a crypto-induced economic crash a year later. Despite Bitcoin having recovered its price since El Salvador has had to scale back crypto purchases and mining to meet the terms of an IMF bailout that was necessitated by the failure of crypto to help improve its teetering economy, which advocates had promised was a sure thing — something that should ring familiar for Pakistanis. Our Bitcoin czar, Bilal Bin Saqib, recently said assets would "never, ever be sold" as a long-term bet on decentralised finance. While this may help a country benefit from price appreciation in the long run, Pakistan's foreign reserves are often little more than pocket change, leaving little wiggle room to spend on crypto without sacrificing elsewhere. Also, Bilal skipped over the point that Bitcoin is still technically illegal in Pakistan under SBP and SECP rules. The pivot to crypto is a high-stakes gamble which, if executed transparently, could attract foreign investment and foster financial inclusion. But the current approach feels more like a technocratic fantasy, that could prove to be two steps back for the economy and a great leap forward for corruption. After all, the Bitcoin advisors include Binance, which does business with the children and companies of President Trump, and World Liberty Financial, which is majority-owned by the Trump family and includes investors who faced fraud charges until the Trump administration dropped the cases against them. Or maybe that is the goal — investors have dropped billions into Trump-owned crypto products. Most of that money will end up in the Trump family's pockets, while the investors have seen benefits ranging from pardons to favourable White House policies.
The Print
2 days ago
- Business
- The Print
IAF chief's frustration over defence procurement delays is valid. It should be a national wake-up call
Pakistan's Bitcoin Reserve and AI energy allocation, severe power shortages notwithstanding, is a shrewd geopolitical move. Partnering with Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial shows Islamabad is leveraging crypto to gain influence with him. It's a dangerous blurring of personal business and governance. Pakistan sure knows how to play up to Trump. IAF chief's frustration over defence procurement delays is valid. It should be a national wake-up call IAF chief's frustration over persistent delays and broken promises in defence procurement should serve as a national wake-up call. A piecemeal approach to critical military acquisitions undermines operational readiness. What India needs is accountability, efficiency, and urgency. A strong and modern military isn't about seeking war—it's about deterring one.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Trump and special envoy Witkoff stand to reap rewards from official business
President Trump received plenty of attention this month when he happily accepted a $400m Boeing 747 from the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar. 'Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our country,' Trump posted on social media. But Trump and his golf buddy turned special negotiator Steve Witkoff landed a much bigger gift this month, likely to enrich them far more: a $2bn investment in their new cryptocurrency venture from the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The investment by a firm controlled by Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund will go to World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm whose biggest beneficiaries are the Trump and Witkoff families. Thanks to Abu Dhabi's purchase of their 'stablecoin', the Trumps and Witkoffs will collect hefty fees and could reap hundreds of millions of dollars in interest payments. The deal isn't as headline-grabbing as Qatar's plane, but it's a lot more valuable. It was the biggest single purchase of World Liberty's cryptocoins yet – an immense injection of revenue into Trump's most lucrative personal money-making scheme. None of this is normal. Presidents don't usually maintain private businesses that sell investment vehicles to foreign leaders who seek favor with the United States. Nor do they appoint their private business partners as diplomatic envoys to negotiate with the same leaders over war and peace. But Trump and Witkoff have found a vastly rewarding way to straddle the line between public service and private profit. Abu Dhabi is the wealthiest and most powerful member of the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich federation of seven Persian Gulf emirates. After Abu Dhabi invested $2bn in the Trump-Witkoff stablecoin, Trump agreed to allow the UAE to buy more advanced AI semiconductors from American companies. 'It's a very big contract,' the president observed. In 2023, the Biden administration sharply restricted exports of advanced chips to the UAE because of fears that some of the technology could leak to China, which has deep economic ties with the emirates. Witkoff and Trump first met in the 1980s, when Witkoff was a lawyer working on one of Trump's Manhattan real-estate deals. Witkoff says he adopted Trump as a role model; 'I learned the business from him,' he told Tucker Carlson in March. Over time, the two dealmakers became golf buddies, friends and business partners. After Trump lost the White House in 2020, Witkoff became one of his staunchest defenders, and testified as a character witness at Trump's 2024 New York trial on business fraud charges. It was Witkoff who first alerted Trump to the opportunity to take over a fledgling cryptocurrency firm that their respective sons had discovered, World Liberty Financial. The two families negotiated equity interests in the venture, which now showcases Trump on its website as its 'chief cryptocurrency advocate'. Witkoff is listed as a 'co-founder'. A heroic photograph of Trump dominates the website. A Trump family subsidiary owns 60% of World Liberty and is entitled to 75% of net income from its coin sales, according to the website. A Witkoff family firm is entitled to 12.5%. The firm says it sold more than $550m in cryptocurrency 'tokens' in its first five months of operation, generating undisclosed amounts of fees and profits for the Trump and Witkoff families. Most of the sales occurred after Trump's election. Before Trump's inauguration, when he was the president-elect's personal envoy for Gaza, Witkoff promoted World Liberty at a crypto investors' conference in Dubai. The meeting's organizers billed him as both a co-founder of World Liberty and the incoming president's key man for the Middle East. During the same period, Witkoff met – in his diplomatic role – Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman, the UAE's Mohamed bin Zayed, and Qatar's Tamim bin Hamad, all of whom command enormous sovereign wealth funds. After Trump's inauguration, Witkoff helped broker Qatar's offer to donate a spare 747 to the president, according to the New York Times. Witkoff came equipped with plenty of experience doing business in the Gulf. He knew the heads of several sovereign wealth funds from earlier real-estate deals. A UAE-controlled fund invested in his purchase of New York's Park Lane hotel in 2013; in 2016, the Qatari fund took the troubled property off their hands. When Russia's Vladimir Putin sent a special envoy to Washington to talk with Witkoff about Ukraine, his emissary wasn't a diplomat; it was Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund. Once Witkoff landed his government post as Trump's all-purpose peace negotiator, he appears to have stepped back from active involvement in World Liberty. A Witkoff spokesman at the state department, Edgar Vasquez, said the envoy 'does not discuss WLF [World Liberty Financial] or any other personal business while conducting his official duties'. His son Zach Witkoff has acted as the firm's chief overseas salesman instead. The fact that Zach's father is one of Trump's closest confidants appears to have helped open doors. When Zach Witkoff visited Pakistan last month, he met the country's powerful army chief and its prime minister, an unusual level of access for an obscure cryptocurrency firm. The prime minister's office noted in a news release on the meeting that Zach is 'the son of Steve Witkoff'. No modern precedent exists for a US diplomatic envoy so deeply tangled in a president's private business interests. 'I can't think of any parallel,' said Robert Dallek, a retired UCLA historian who has written biographies of Franklin D Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson. Presidents have sent special envoys abroad since the early days of the republic. George Washington sent Gouverneur Morris, a delegate to the constitutional convention, to London in 1789 to negotiate peace with Britain. Roosevelt sent investment banker Averell Harriman to Moscow in 1941 to talk with Stalin. But historians say they can't think of any instance in which a special envoy was also the president's partner in a private moneymaking venture. In more recent history, then secretary of state Hillary Clinton came under fire after foreign donors made big donations to the private Clinton Foundation, prompting allegations the family was mixing public and private interests. Trump and other Republicans denounced that arrangement as unethical. 'It's a criminal enterprise – Saudi Arabia giving $25m, Qatar,' Trump said in 2016. 'These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money.' 'My goal is to keep foreign money out of American politics,' Trump said. This time it's Democratic senators who are raising alarms. 'The White House is open for business, and the Trump family is proudly advertising to the world where to send the check,' Chris Murphy of Connecticut told the Guardian. 'The Trumps and the Witkoffs are in business together making money off their government positions,' he said. 'It's just plain as day.' Murphy charged that the administration's announcement that it plans to relax restrictions on semiconductor exports to the UAE, a change the emirates have long sought, is a 'quid pro quo' for Abu Dhabi's investment in the Trump-Witkoff crypto venture. 'You wouldn't be investing in Trump stablecoin unless you want something from him,' Murphy said. 'It's all about getting access to Trump and ultimately getting favorable policy from the United States.' Murphy and other Democrats also charge that once the emirates have those chips, it will be difficult for the United States to prevent some of them from reaching China, which also has close ties to the emirates. 'China will be right there waiting to get their hands on that technology,' he warned. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion To ethics officials from previous administrations, the Trump and Witkoff stakes in World Liberty raise red flags. By reaping income from the firm's crypto sales, both Trump and Witkoff appear to be violating the US constitution's emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officers from accepting payments from foreign governments, they said. 'If Witkoff owns an interest in World Liberty and there is a UAE-controlled fund investment in World Liberty, that is likely a violation of the emoluments clause,' Richard W Painter, the top White House ethics official during the George W Bush administration, said in an email message. 'His intentions don't matter.' Witkoff is also subject to administrative regulations enforced by the office of government ethics, Painter and other former officials noted. 'An employee may not use their public office for their own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise … or for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated,' the OGE rules state. The regulations also admonish employees to 'ensure that the performance of their official duties does not give rise to an appearance of use of public office for private gain'. Witkoff says he has begun the paperwork to divest his interest in World Liberty by transferring his interest to his adult sons. But that move, which he hasn't completed, may not insulate him fully from the ethics laws. He has already collected substantial gains from his equity in World Liberty. And even after a divestment, if his sons profit thanks to his diplomatic post, that would appear to be a violation of the OGE regulations. Trump is exempt from all conflict of interest regulations, because Congress decided long ago that restricting a president's authority because of his financial interests would be both impractical and a constitutional overstretch. The White House says Trump and Witkoff have done nothing wrong. 'Despite dishonest claims from Democrats, there are no conflicts of interest,' deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a written statement. 'Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is divesting from all of his assets, including WLF, and has no operational role in the company. These types of baseless accusations only serve to distract from all his incredible work in service to the country.' The same goes for Trump, she said. 'The president's assets are in a trust managed by his children' – a back-handed acknowledgement that Trump, unlike many of his recent predecessors, has neither divested nor placed his assets in a blind trust. 'There are no conflicts of interest,' she repeated. But 'no conflicts of interest' doesn't square with the facts. World Liberty is openly using its association with the president to generate profit for the Trump and Witkoff families. Senator Murphy dismissed the White House's defense as 'absurd on its face'. 'Everybody can see what's going on,' he said. As for Witkoff's day job – negotiating peace in Gaza, ending the war in Ukraine, and cutting a deal with Iran – it doesn't appear to be going especially well. In Gaza, Witkoff helped to close Biden's ceasefire deal in January by making the point that Trump wanted it, and by making sure Netanyahu got – briefly – on board. But he's failed at several attempts to extend or renew the ceasefire. He won freedom for one Israeli-American hostage by going around Netanyahu, but not the 20 Israeli hostages who are still believed alive; he's trying to negotiate another temporary ceasefire that would free about half of the captives. He and Trump appear to have misjudged how stubborn Netanyahu would be in his desire to continue the war. In Ukraine, Witkoff tried to win Putin's confidence by pre-emptively endorsing some of Russia's main demands, including its claim to five Ukrainian regions including Crimea. That hasn't been enough; Putin still appears intent on pursuing his goal of controlling all of Ukraine. In a two-hour telephone call on 19 May, Trump tried to jawbone Putin into embracing a ceasefire, but the Russian leader merely agreed to hold more talks – during which he intends to continue the war. On Iran, Witkoff initially stumbled by publicly softening US policy, saying Iran could maintain a uranium enrichment program as long as it didn't move toward weapons capability. After a storm of protest from US hardliners, he backed off and returned to the demand that Iran dismantle its entire enrichment program. Trump has given the US-Iranian negotiations a deadline of mid-June, but that's unlikely to be enough to reach a result. Then secretary of state John Kerry needed 20 months to negotiate the 2015 agreement that Trump scrapped, and that was after years of preparatory work. What's gone wrong? The answer from many foreign policy professionals is that Witkoff, a real-estate developer with no previous diplomatic experience, is in over his head. 'He knows nothing about Russia, he knows nothing about Ukraine, he knows nothing about Iran, he knows nothing about nuclear weapons,' said John Bolton, who served as national security adviser for 18 months during Trump's first term. 'What could go wrong?' Witkoff readily acknowledges that he was naive when he started. 'Of course I didn't understand the dimensions of it,' he said of the Gaza conflict. 'Now I do.' Witkoff says he's fully devoted to his peacemaking mission and considers it more important than anything he accomplished in his real estate career. 'The work is so worthy,' he told the Atlantic. Trump has long derided US diplomats as lousy negotiators and extolled entrepreneurs as master dealmakers. This month, at a belated swearing-in ceremony for Witkoff, Trump awarded his friend the highest compliment in his business-world lexicon: 'He's a killer.' Witkoff told the Atlantic that he's been boning up on traditional diplomacy by reading books and watching Netflix documentaries. 'I watched a ton of stuff on Henry Kissinger,' he said. But Kissinger never tried to negotiate three complex deals at the same time. Kissinger's negotiations to withdraw US troops from Vietnam lasted more than three years. His talks to reopen US relations with China took more than a year. His disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt took about 20 months. Witkoff has been on the job for only four months – six if you count his time as Trump's pre-inaugural Gaza envoy. And he's working for a president whose foreign policy decisions often appear erratic. So landing the Nobel peace prize, as Kissinger did, is likely to be a tall order. But Trump and Witkoff will have at least one consolation: By the end of Trump's term, their families will be a lot richer.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Editorial: Office for sale — Trump's cryptocurrency self-dealings corrupt Washington
President Donald Trump has been forthright and transparent in his desire to enrich himself with his cryptocurrency memecoin profiting off of his high public office. Trump is beyond shame, but this corrupt debasement of the Oval Office is accepted by so many who should know better, including his fellow Republicans. Unlike the hundreds of other crypto coins that have been launched in the largely unregulated crypto casino, though, this one allows attendees to in effect directly pay the president of the United States. Hundreds paid big bucks to join Trump at a dinner at his Virginia golf club, many of them flying in from overseas and explicitly telling reporters that they had paid to play, hoping to influence the president. Even factoring in fees alone, Trump's family has made more than $320 million off the coin even as it gears up its World Liberty Financial crypto project. Trump has only gotten more and more brazen as he's played chicken with our anti-corruption standards and won every time. During his first term, there was relatively widespread and bipartisan consternation over foreign officials spending lavishly at Trump's hotels and other properties. Such self-dealing, which seemed extravagant then, now appears quaint. No longer do foreign oligarchs, officials and others trying to curry favor with the man who can move global markets limit themselves to club memberships or expensive hotel rooms. No, now they just give the cash directly to Trump via an industry that Trump's own slavish officials are tasked with regulating. This would all be offensive enough had the MAGA contingent not pretended to care about corruption over the last several years, fixating on whatever morsels of ostensible evidence they could drum up to demonstrate that former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter were involved in corrupt and nefarious foreign dealings. Despite gobs of taxpayer funds going into congressional and Justice Department inquiries into this supposed corruption, there was never nearly enough evidence to remotely suggest that the Bidens were making big profits off of Joe Biden's office. The public hardly needs such detailed investigations into Trump self dealing because he's happy to just do it all out in the open. Trump seems genuinely bewildered that anyone would have a problem with him, for example, accepting a free $400 million jet from a foreign government that is slated to go to his personal foundation upon his exit from office, telling reporters that it is actually very smart to take extravagant gifts from Gulf monarchies. It's almost hard to blame Trump himself for all this, given that he's been open and upfront his entire life about the fact that he sees the world purely in transactional terms and sees everything through the lens of what he can get out of it. He's written books to this effect, built an entire public persona around the notion that either you personally profit or you're a sucker and a loser. We reserve the bulk of our scoring for all of the supposedly oversight entities that let it happen, and the craven hypocrisy from the members of the party that Trump has now fully taken over. If they continue to stand by and let Trump rake in the dough from openly corrupt dealings, they have no ground to stand on to ever again criticize supposed public corruption. ___
