An investment fund linked to UAE Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan has secretly acquired 49% of the crypto project World Liberty Financial (WLFI), according to The Wall Street Journal.
The deal was signed by Eric Trump in January 2025, just four days before his father’s inauguration. The agreement was not publicly announced.
The buyer was Aryam Investment 1 from Abu Dhabi, a company controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, the UAE’s national security advisor and brother of the country’s president, Mohammed bin Zayed.
Half of the sum—$250 million—was paid in advance. Approximately $187 million went to Trump family companies (DT Marks DEFI LLC and DT Marks SC LLC), with at least $31 million directed to firms associated with project co-founder Steve Witkoff.
Later, the president appointed Witkoff as a special envoy to the Middle East. His son, Zach, serves as the CEO of World Liberty Financial.
After the deal closed, representatives of the Emirati AI conglomerate G42, led by Sheikh Tahnoon, emerged. Aryam Investment 1 became the largest external shareholder of the DeFi platform.
UAE Interests
The WSJ investigation revealed additional details of the Emirates’ involvement. A few weeks before the Trump administration announced an agreement with the UAE on AI chips, Sheikh Tahnoon’s company MGX invested about $2 billion in Binance in stablecoin USD1 from WLFI.
According to the investigation’s authors, the deal effectively laid the groundwork for the launch of a “stablecoin”. On the World Liberty side, the project was overseen by a representative of G42, controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon.
The timing of events raised concerns among Democrats. In September 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Elissa Slotkin called for an investigation into potential conflicts of interest. The focus was on Steve Witkoff and David Sacks, the White House advisor on AI and cryptocurrency issues.
Lawmakers referred to a New York Times investigation documenting the temporal link between World Liberty’s deals with UAE partners and parallel negotiations by the Trump administration on exporting advanced microchips to the country.
Previously, G42 faced restrictions from Joe Biden’s team due to concerns over ties with China. However, under Trump, the ban was lifted: in November 2025, the president approved the supply of computing power equivalent to 35,000 of Nvidia’s latest GB300 processors.
Back in October, the Financial Times revealed that the Trump family earned over $1 billion from cryptocurrency projects.