Jared Kushner: A Corrupt Jewish Kleptocrat
After I had originally finished my article ‘Jared Kushner: An Unelected Jewish Dictator’ a piece was published by the New York Times, which argued that Kushner was likely corrupt and engaged in shady business deals with Israel’s billionaire Steinmetz family. (1)
The article – which likely had to pass through a lot of fact checking and given several green lights for fear of legal repercussions from the Kushner and Steinmetz families – makes the circumstantial case that Kushner is linked to Beny Steinmetz’s ongoing woes over alleged corruption surrounding mining contracts in Guinea via Steinmetz’s nephew Raz.
The New York Times is careful to not make positive claims, but rather imply corruption and talk about ‘potential’ conflicts of interests for Jared Kushner and his unofficial role as the unelected dictator of the United States.
The argument made is simply this:
In 2012 Jared Kushner’s ‘Kushner Companies’ went on a $190 million spending spree buying up a large number of apartment buildings in Lower Manhattan. For the $50 million in deposits required to do this; Kushner turned to an overseas partner who wished to remain anonymous, but who turns out to have been Raz Steinmetz.
Raz Steinmetz was revealed by the famous Panama Papers leak to have access to his uncle Beny’s bank accounts and vice versa. Therefore – despite claims that this is ‘no longer the case’ by the Steinmetz family – it is possible (and dare I say likely) that Kushner was somewhat involved with Beny Steinmetz – who is the patriarch as far as business is concerned of the Steinmetz family – with Raz as merely the chosen representative.
Thus, Kushner may have been aware or benefited from the alleged corruption dealings of Beny Steinmetz in Guinea, which - as the Trump administration was supervising the investigation into Steinmetz’s dealings at the time – placed Kushner in a serious conflict of interest.
As it happens – as James North acerbically noted – Steinmetz’s lawyer Alan Dershowitz implied that the charges against his client are going to get thrown out soon but I cannot find any record of this beyond the initial media reports suggesting he may have been successfull. (2)
Perhaps it was just typical Dershowitz huff and puff, but the frightening fact is that it could very well be far more; Kushner interfering in the case to protect his one-time business partner from public embarrassment.
Obviously, we don’t and likely won’t even know for sure if this happened, but even the possibility looms ominously like a sword of Damocles for the domestic and international credibility of Donald Trump then as now.
It also didn’t (and doesn’t) bode well for the public finances if a man who may have engaged in corruption – and whose family has significant previous form for engaging in corruption-related activities – (3) has the power and influence to potentially abuse them at will.
It also suggests that Kushner was unfit to broker any kind of peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, because – while he withdrew from management of ‘Kushner Companies’. He was still a named direct beneficiary of the firm and therefore has a significant source of motivation to support Israel - besides his own militant jewishness - because that is the base of the fortunes of the Steinmetz family - which necessarily affect his own through the Steinmetz stake in ‘Kushner Companies’ – rather than doing what was in America’s interests.
The issue of whether Beny Steinmetz engaged in corruption is more difficult, because while Frederic Cilins – who was the representative of Steinmetz’s BSG Resources in Guinea – was almost certainly guilty of engaging in bribery. (4)
There is no direct evidence that Steinmetz knew of or condoned Cilins’ actions, but yet it is difficult to imagine that Steinmetz wasn’t at least aware of what was going because of the noise - then as now - around corporate corruption as well as because Cilins wouldn’t have been likely to engage in such behaviour without at least tacit approval from the highest levels of management at BSG Resources.
So while we cannot say for sure whether Jared Kushner or Beny Steinmetz engaged in or benefited from corruption. It seems clear that there is a decent circumstantial case for thinking this might indeed have been the case.
References
(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/us/politics/jared-kushner-beny-steinmetz.html?_r=1
(2) http://mondoweiss.net/2017/04/financial-partners-steinmetz/
(3) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/jared-kushner-convict-fraud-father-charles-new-york-property-empire-president-donald-trump-adviser-a7552496.html
(4) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/us/politics/jared-kushner-beny-steinmetz.html?_r=1; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/19/israeli-tycoon-beny-steinmetz-arrested-over-guinea-bribery-claims ; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/01/04/bsg-resources-beny-steinmetz-released-without-charge-guinea/