The Real Estate deals of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, and his family are now being exposed following the reports that he played a role in connecting with Russian officials during the campaign period. A Washington Post story exposed the use by Jared and his real estate company of loans for job-starved areas. Another article by the New York Daily News provided details on a business rivalry between Jared’s father and uncle.
The father of Jared, Charles Kushner, sent a cease-and-desist letter to this brother, Murray Kushner.
The letter told Murray not to use Jared for an investment pitch. Murray, aside from being Jared’s uncle, is the competitor of Charles who is also in real estate. Even before Jared gained notoriety as the son-in-law of Trump who tried to establish a back-door communications channel with the Russians, the elder Kushner brothers have been feuding with several lawsuits against each other.
Pitch to Chinese investors
Murray’s company, KRE, has a real estate project at 235 Grand St. in Jersey City. He used a photo of Jared, Ivanka, and Donald to convince Chinese property investors to purchase a unit by captioning the image “Work hand-in-hand with Trump son-in-law Kushner." Besides acquiring a unit, KRE offers prospective Chinese buyers an EB-5 visa and possible U.S.
residency by investing $500,000 in the project.
Dave Barry, a partner at KRE, blamed a Chinese marketing subcontractor for the use of Jared’s photo. He added that because of the issue, KRE terminated the contract.
But it is not just Uncle Murray who has been using his kinship with Jared. Nicole Meyer Kushner, the sister of Jared, likewise used a similar proposition to Beijing investor for the One Journal Square project of Kushner Cos.
that Jared used to run.
Creative way to secure loans
According to The Washington Post, the 50-story residential building across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan that was built by Jared Kushner and his real estate partners used a loan from a 2015 federal program. It was a program to provide low-cost financing through the EB-5 visa program designed with poor and employment-starved regions as target beneficiaries.
However, by working with New Jersey state officials, Kushner and the company made a map which defined the area around 65 Bay Street as a four-mile stretch of land which included some of the poorest and crime-filled communities. But a few blocks away, there were rich neighborhoods conveniently excluded from the map.
But the move was legal. Similar strategies have been used before by other developers to acquire more funds to finance their projects at a lower cost.
