A new book by American investigative journalist Matthew Cole, "Princes and Thieves", an excerpt from which was published by Vanity Fair magazine, alleges that Jared Kushner, son-in-law and adviser to US President Donald Trump, had access to a bank account into which large sums of money were deposited by senior officials.
According to the author, during Trump’s first presidential term, the leadership of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia granted Kushner access to two secret bank accounts that received a total of approximately $2 billion.
One of the accounts was held at First Abu Dhabi Bank and belonged to a charitable foundation linked to the UAE authorities. Kushner allegedly had the authority to manage the funds in the account, which were intended to finance unofficial diplomatic and other operations in the Middle East.
In late 2017, the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) detained a Russian hacker who was an employee of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, Cole writes in his book. He was reportedly given a choice: either be extradited to the United Kingdom, where he faced imprisonment on espionage charges, or cooperate with Dutch intelligence. The Russian hacker chose the latter option.
According to sources cited by Cole, the Netherlands subsequently gained access to certain files stored on a remote server. Screenshots from Jared Kushner’s iPhone were reportedly discovered among them.
Commenting on the allegations, the US president’s son-in-law rejected the claims, saying that "outrageous fabrications" were being presented as investigative journalism.
"The allegations made by this author are completely insane and never happened," Kushner wrote on his account on the social media platform X.
Image: Bing Guan/Reuters