# World Liberty Financial UAE Sale In **January 2025**, four days before Trump's second inauguration, the Trump-family DeFi venture **[[World Liberty Financial]]** (WLFI) sold a **49% stake** for **$500 million** to Aryam Investment 1, an Abu Dhabi vehicle tied to [[Tahnoon bin Zayed]], the UAE national security adviser. [[Eric Trump]] signed for World Liberty. The deal was never announced. The Wall Street Journal revealed it on **February 1, 2026**. Of the $250 million paid up front, about $187 million went to Trump-family entities and about $31 million to entities tied to the Witkoff family, the Journal reported. In November 2025 the administration approved advanced-chip sales to Tahnoon's [[G42]]. The White House and World Liberty say the deal did not influence policy. > Corrected 2026-09-28: this page previously dated the sale to "early 2026" and named the buyer as the UAE government. The sale closed in January 2025, the buyer is a Tahnoon-linked vehicle, and early 2026 is when it was disclosed. WLFI was formed in 2024 by **[[Zach Witkoff]]** and **[[Alex Witkoff]]** (sons of Trump's Middle East envoy [[Steve Witkoff]]) together with **[[Eric Trump]]**. ## Why It Matters This is one of the cleanest documented instances of a foreign government taking a direct half-billion-dollar position in a Trump-family business. Per the "follow the money" reading of [[Iran War 2026]] (Ed Elson, Prof G Media, March 2026), the sale binds the Witkoff and Trump families' finances to a Gulf state that is both a U.S. military host during the Iran war and a counterparty in [[Steve Witkoff]]'s official diplomatic portfolio. The structural conflict is layered: - **Steve Witkoff** negotiates U.S. Middle East policy as Special Envoy. - His sons' crypto venture takes **$500M from the UAE**, one of the governments he negotiates with. - His son **Alex Witkoff** simultaneously runs [[The Witkoff Group]]'s Middle East real-estate deals. - **Eric Trump**, the President's son, is a co-principal. The transaction is the crypto-channel analogue of [[Jared Kushner]]'s [[Affinity Partners]] Gulf-sovereign capital relationship — a foreign government converting goodwill into a direct family-business stake during an active war. ## See Also - [[World Liberty Financial]] - [[Zach Witkoff]] - [[Alex Witkoff]] - [[Eric Trump]] - [[Steve Witkoff]] - [[Trump Family Iran War Profiteering]] - [[Emoluments Clauses]] - [[United Arab Emirates]]