# The Witkoff Group **The Witkoff Group** is the New York- and Miami-based real-estate firm **[[Steve Witkoff]]** founded in 1997. It built its name buying and repositioning Manhattan office towers and hotels, and later luxury projects such as One High Line in Manhattan, the Shore Club in Miami Beach and the Shell Bay development in Hallandale Beach. It has moved its headquarters to Miami's Design District. Since 2025 it has been run by his son **[[Alex Witkoff]]**, while the founder serves as Trump's Special Envoy negotiating with the Gulf states, Russia, Israel and Hamas. The firm matters to this KB because it is the **property leg of the Witkoff conflict structure**. The envoy holds the office, the sons hold the businesses, and some of the businesses' counterparties are the same governments the envoy negotiates with. ## The Gulf money before the office The firm's dealings with the Gulf predate Witkoff's appointment. In **August 2023** it sold the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South to the **Qatar Investment Authority** for **$623 million**. The Qatari sovereign fund took the building out of a troubled ownership structure. Two years later Qatar was a central mediator in the Gaza negotiations Witkoff led. Bisnow's 2025 reporting also noted the firm had worked with investors from Qatar, Ukraine and China. ## The handoff and the divestment - **March 2025.** Witkoff said he would divest from both the Witkoff Group and [[World Liberty Financial]]. Ethics experts, among them former State Department legal adviser Harold Koh, asked how a transfer inside the family would prevent the envoy role from being used to "skew policy your way." - **Operating control went to Alex.** Alex had been co-CEO with his father and became sole CEO. This is the same father-to-son instrument [[Howard Lutnick]] used at [[Cantor Fitzgerald]]. - **September 2025.** A financial disclosure showed Witkoff had sold a **$120 million stake** in the firm. The disclosure did not name the buyer or say whether White House ethics officials had approved the plan. It listed total assets of at least $350 million, and Bloomberg reported $34 million in distributions from a holding company spanning real estate, hotels, golf and crypto. - **The crypto side lagged.** Witkoff's WLF interest was still in place months after the March pledge. That was the basis for the **Jan. 8, 2026** request from House Foreign Affairs Democrats asking the Commerce and State inspectors general to investigate. ## While the father negotiates In **September 2025** the *New York Times* reported that Alex Witkoff had pitched the Qatar Investment Authority and Emirati and Kuwaiti funds on a roughly $4 billion real-estate credit fund, during the Gaza talks. QIA confirmed the approach and declined. The firm said the talks never got past preliminary discussions. Ed Elson's *Follow The Money* (Prof G Media, March 2026) reported that Alex struck several Middle East deals in this period and promoted them to investors. The details sit on [[Alex Witkoff]] and in the [[Witkoff Sons News Log]]. No law requires the sons to file anything, and no disclosure form captures the firm's counterparties. That gap is the whole design. ## See Also - [[Steve Witkoff]] · [[Alex Witkoff]] · [[Zach Witkoff]] - [[Witkoff Sons News Log]] · [[Steve Witkoff News Log]] - [[World Liberty Financial]] · [[World Liberty Financial UAE Sale]] · [[Executive Branch Club]] - [[Trump Family Iran War Profiteering]] · [[Trump Family Corruption Ecosystem]] · [[Watching]] - [[Howard Lutnick]] · [[Jared Kushner]] · [[Affinity Partners]]