Organizers on Sunday barred journalists from a publicly advertised event in Shanghai that offered Chinese investors the chance to get US immigrant visas if they put money in a real-estate project linked to the family of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
The two-tower luxury apartment complex in New Jersey, One Journal Square, is being developed by KABR Group and the Kushner Companies, which until recently was headed by senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, the husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
The developers are seeking to raise US$150 million, or 15.4 percent of funding for the project, from investors through the EB-5 visa program, according to marketing materials posted by the event’s organizer, immigration agency Qiaowai (僑外移民).
Photo: AFP
The controversial EB-5 program allows wealthy foreigners to, in effect, buy US immigration visas for themselves and families by investing at least US$500,000 in certain development projects.
“Sorry, this is a private event,” said a man stopping journalists from entering a function room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Shanghai.
Guests at the event said Kushner’s sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, spoke for about 10 minutes, including about her family’s humble roots.
According to the New York Times, Meyer attended a similar event in Beijing on Saturday and told the audience of about 100 people the project “means a lot to me and my entire family.”
Jared Kushner, whose White House portfolio includes relations with China, sold his stake in Kushner Companies to a family trust early this year.
“Mr Kushner has no involvement in the operation of Kushner Companies and divested his interests in the One Journal Square project by selling them to a family trust that he, his wife, and his children are not beneficiaries of, a mechanism suggested by the Office of Government Ethics,” his lawyer, Blake Roberts of WilmerHale law firm, said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters by the White House.
“As previously stated, he will recuse from particular matters concerning the EB-5 visa program,” it said.
A Kushner Companies spokeswoman declined to comment in a New York Times article about the Beijing event published on Saturday.
The Times story said Meyer did not respond when asked if she was concerned about possible conflicts of interest facing her brother. Journalists from the Times and the Washington Post were removed from Saturday’s Beijing event, the newspapers reported.
One potential investor, Sophie Xing, said a “very important” factor in her decision to attend Sunday’s event was the fact the project was a Kushner Companies investment and that Trump’s son-in-law’s sister would be in Shanghai.
“Actually I really don’t know how close they are, but I felt that this was a pretty good project,” she said.
In a promotional text message seen by Reuters, Qiaowai made note of Meyer’s relationship to Trump and called her the event’s “heavyweight honored guest.”
Qiaowai representatives at the event declined to answer questions from journalists and calls to its listed phone number went unanswered.
Qiaowai is also known as QWOS. Its promotional materials for the project, which it also calls Kushner1, advertise the prospect of putting money in under the federal EB-5 program.
The program is popular among wealthy Chinese looking to shift assets abroad or move overseas, but it has come under fire in the US.
Some US lawmakers have called for changing or abolishing the EB-5 program, but the scheme was recently renewed by Congress until Sept. 30.
Xing said a Kushner representative who spoke on Sunday stressed that EB-5 rules could change after September to raise the minimum required investment.
Another person who attended Sunday’s event, Liu Guoqi, was mindful of the potential rule change.
Liu said he had been to previous pitches for EB-5 investments, but had concerns about the risks.
“The whole thing may change later this year so we feel that there isn’t much time left,” he said.
In the US, the EB-5 program has also sparked concerns about possible scams. Some immigrants have been burned by misrepresentations made about the program by promoters, both inside and outside the US. Many have lost not only their money, but their chance at winning US citizenship.
Trump has vowed to clamp down on illegal immigration.
In addition to Beijing and Shanghai, the road show for One Journal Square was scheduled to visit the Chinese cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Wuhan, according to Qiaowai’s marketing materials online.
It calls the Kushner family a “famous real estate clan” and touts EB-5 immigration as “peace of mind.”
Qiaowai’s Chinese-language marketing material describes the project as “supported by the government, created by a star developer,” and says the project is its 87th EB-5 program.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by