Steve Witkoff

Four days before Trump's second inauguration, a company called Aryam Investment 1 paid $500 million for 49 percent of World Liberty Financial, the crypto company the Trumps run with the family of Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer Trump had already picked as his Middle East envoy. Half the money came upfront: about $187 million to Trump family entities and at least $31 million to the Witkoffs, according to the Wall Street Journal, which uncovered the deal a year later. Behind Aryam stood Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates' national security adviser.

On May 1, 2025, Zach Witkoff, Steve Witkoff's son and a World Liberty co-founder, announced that a $2 billion investment in Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, would be paid in USD1, the digital dollar his family's company had launched weeks earlier. The investor was MGX, a fund Tahnoon chairs.

Two weeks after that announcement, in May 2025, the White House approved a framework letting the Emirates import up to 500,000 of Nvidia's best chips a year, a fifth of them reserved for G42, Tahnoon's artificial intelligence company. Witkoff and David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto adviser, backed it, The New York Times reported.

The Witkoffs sold about half of their World Liberty stake to Aryam for an estimated $48 million after tax, in the transaction the Wall Street Journal first reported, Forbes reported in April 2026.

Witkoff kept the rest of the World Liberty stake, and later reported about $107 million in 2025 income from the company that holds it.

About a year before the October 2026 talks in Miami, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, pitched tapping roughly $300 billion of frozen Russian assets for American-Russian projects and an American-led rebuilding of Ukraine, during a visit to Witkoff's waterfront estate in Miami Beach, The Wall Street Journal reported. Dmitriev went on to become Witkoff and Kushner's counterpart in the Ukraine talks.

Putin first raised Lukoil with Witkoff and Kushner at a meeting on Sept. 5, 2026. He proposed the deal, and the Americans said they would work on it. According to The New York Times, the deal became part of Witkoff and Kushner's Ukraine talks with the Kremlin, with a substantial upfront payment and a share of the profits for the United States. In most of these deals, the stake belongs to an American agency, not to a person, and that nothing in the record shows Witkoff pocketing a share.

In early October 2026, at talks in Miami, Witkoff and Kushner proposed moving part of the frozen Russian central bank money into a vehicle under Washington's control. Europe said no, the FT reported.

After Putin met Witkoff again in St. Petersburg on Oct. 21, 2026, Putin's aide Yuri Ushakov confirmed that the two sides were discussing Lukoil's foreign assets.

Witkoff negotiates with Kyiv as well as Moscow. His financial disclosure lists a stake in the $50 million-or-more category in a Manhattan condo development he co-owns with Len Blavatnik, a billionaire Ukraine sanctioned in 2023, Popular Information reported.

In January 2026, Pakistan's finance minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb, signed a memorandum with a World Liberty affiliate to explore using USD1 for cross-border payments. Zach Witkoff, Steve Witkoff's son, signed for the company. Six months later, there had been no pilot, no licenses and no transactions, officials told Al Jazeera.

In February 2026, Aurangzeb signed a second memorandum, this one with the US General Services Administration, to "operate, maintain, renovate and redevelop" the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, a property owned by Pakistan's national airline. Pakistan's finance ministry said Steve Witkoff had "negotiated and stewarded" it. Bisnow found no US financial interest in the property and called the arrangement unusual.

In December 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported the details of Project Sunrise, a Gaza reconstruction plan drawn up before Davos by a team led by Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. The plan had the United States providing $60 billion to "anchor" the program, the Journal reported. Its first 10 years would cost $112 billion, and by year 10, "70 percent of Gaza's coastline should be monetized."

On Jan. 16, 2026, the White House named the Board of Peace's executive board, whose members include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Kushner, Witkoff, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Marc Rowan.

Before the US-Iran memorandum was signed on June 17, 2026, mediators told The New York Times in May that Witkoff and Kushner had floated real estate projects in Tehran and an investment fund.

On May 25, 2026, Trump posted that all countries should immediately sign the Abraham Accords, starting with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Two days later, at a Cabinet meeting, he turned to his envoy: "Steve, are you going to get them to sign?" Witkoff answered: "We're definitely pushing it, Mr. President." The demand did not make it into the June memorandum with Iran, whose text never mentions the Accords, Israel or Saudi Arabia.

In 2023, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund paid about $623 million for the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South in Manhattan, and property records list Witkoff's company as a seller.