While a company in the United Arab Emirates has financed the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto project, the Wall Street Journal reveals a significant conflict of interest. What are the ins and outs of this agreement?
The Wall Street Journal reveals curious links between Donald Trump and the United Arab Emirates
On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal published an extensive report implicating Donald Trump, his family, and his friends in an investment by the United Arab Emirates in his company World Liberty Financial (WLFI).
In summary, the report suggests that a $500 million investment facilitated access to “highly secure artificial intelligence chips” for companies owned by Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of the President of the United Arab Emirates.
In concrete terms, the same report identifies close links between numerous players, echoing certain rumors and information that we have been able to relay over the past 12 months.
Firstly, it should be noted that Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan is one of the world’s largest private investors and that three of his companies are repeatedly mentioned in this case: G42, MGX, and Aryam Investment 1.
The Wall Street Journal reports that four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed a $500 million deal to acquire a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial.
This was the result of a visit by Eric Trump to a crypto conference in Abu Dhabi in December 2024, as well as a visit by Steve Witkoff, a long-time friend of the US president, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, and special envoy to the Middle East.
A week after this visit, two entities named Aryam Investment 1 were registered two days apart, in Abu Dhabi and Delaware. It was this company that allegedly provided the funds used to acquire 49% of the Trump family’s crypto company, at least half of which was paid to various individuals.
This investment gave G42 and MGX seats on the board of directors of World Liberty Financial.
However, as the chart below shows, MGX is also the company that invested $2 billion in Binance last year using the USD1 stablecoin. At the time, MGX simply described the stablecoin as a “superior product” without revealing the close links between the various players:
Through these various connections, the Wall Street Journal questions the role that Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan may have played in Changpeng Zhao’s (CZ) pardon. And with good reason, as the founder of Binance lives in Abu Dhabi and also holds Emirati citizenship. Furthermore, this pardon may have facilitated the granting of a global license to Binance by the Abu Dhabi Global Market, with a view to establishing a global headquarters there.
Incidentally, this pardon came in October, just one month after MGX invested 15% in TikTok’s US entity, allowing the social network to continue operating on American soil.
In addition, while Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan has long been interested in AI, the Biden administration had restricted his access to US chips, fearing that this technology would benefit China due to his ties to Huawei.
However, two months after a meeting at the White House with the interested party in March 2025, the Trump administration committed to supplying 500,000 AI chips to the United Arab Emirates, of which about one-fifth would be reserved for G42.
While it is important to remain cautious in the face of all these revelations, it is clear that this raises questions about the links that can sometimes be forged behind the scenes for various agreements.
