All the president’s millions: how the Trumps are turning the presidency into riches | Donald Trump

A crusading prosecutor in the Balkans comes under pressure to drop a big case. Vietnamese villagers learn they are to be evicted. A convicted crypto kingpin in the Gulf receives a pardon.

All have one thing in common: they appear to be connected to the Trump family’s campaign to amass riches around the world. Since Donald Trump’s re-election a year ago, warnings that his use of presidential power to advance personal interests is corroding American democracy have grown ever louder. What is less understood – and perhaps even more dangerous – is the damage this is doing everywhere else.

Trump’s eldest sons, Don Jr and Eric, formally the custodians of the family business, are conducting a global dealmaking blitz. They have broken ground on new golf courses, received permission for new skyscrapers, rented out the Trump brand, and in cryptocurrency they have embraced a venture with the capacity to bring in more than everything that has gone before.

They insist, in Eric’s words, that there is a “huge wall” between this moneymaking and their father’s position as the most powerful man alive. “Nothing I do has anything to do with the White House,” Eric told CNN recently.

But Kristofer Harrison, a senior foreign policy official under President George W Bush who now runs an anti-corruption organisation called the Dekleptocracy Project, is among those accusing the Trumps of operating a “pay to play” system that benefits those who do business with the president’s family. Such an approach could be manipulated, he said, especially by rival powers such as China. He said: “Trump has made authoritarians’ wildest dreams come true.”

Despite allegations – denied by the White House – of conflicts of interest, no explicit quid pro quos have been proven. But the Trumps’ business interests are raising questions about convictions that have been quashed, sensitive technologies transferred, tariffs eased, alliances forged. Should any of this give the appearance of abuse of public office for private gain – commonly known as corruption – ethics experts fear it invites other rulers to do the same.

In Trump’s first term, the chief concern was whether foreign rulers would take expensive suites at Trump’s Washington hotel as a way of putting money in his pocket. He pledged that there would be no family business deals abroad. That pledge has now been ditched. And although the president has put his stakes in the family’s businesses in a trust, his financial disclosures show profits still flow to him.

The Trumps’ most natural allies – first in business, now also in politics – have long been the rulers of the Gulf’s petro-monarchies, who see no distinction between their states’ interests and their families’.

Since last year, the Trumps’ business in the region has accelerated. A golf course in Oman; Dubai apartments going on sale. Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, said Trump’s trip to the Middle East in May seemed “less like a presidential visit and more like a personal business venture”.

In Qatar, a golf resort deal with a state company in April was followed the next month by the gift of a “flying palace” for Trump to use as Air Force One, then in October he committed US troops to defend the tiny Gulf state. In Saudi Arabia, where new golf and hotel projects are already under way, news in November of yet another potential venture – in a development overseen by the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman – emerged days before Trump agreed to sell F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and sometime diplomatic envoy, said recently: “What people call conflicts of interests … I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world.” The Saudis have given his fund billions.

Asked to comment for this article, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said: “The media’s continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are irresponsible and reinforce the public’s distrust in what they read. Neither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.”

Ben Rhodes, who was Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, argues that the Trumps’ approach amounts to “nothing more than an old-fashioned grift tethered to a superpower”.

“It’s incalculable what damage we are now seeing,” said Rhodes. “Corruption,” he believes, “is now the norm in geopolitics.”

’Atmosphere of lynching’

On a foggy Belgrade morning a fortnight after Trump’s triumph last November, Estela Radonjic Zivkov arrived at her office to find two officers from Serbia’s state security agency waiting for her. Zivkov is the deputy head of the institute that oversees the protection of historical sites. “The work I do is deeply rewarding,” she said. “It allows me to preserve cultural heritage in the most meaningful and responsible way.”

The agents introduced themselves politely but gave her a warning: don’t challenge the decision to demolish one of the capital’s most resonant sites to make way for a hotel and tower. The building in question was the former Yugoslav army headquarters, bombed in the Nato offensive to force Slobodan Milošević’s troops out of Kosovo.

The agents made clear there was a “state interest” in the project. An agreement seen by the Guardian designates it as one of “special significance”. These were no ordinary developers. The Trump Tower Belgrade, a $500m (£378m) hotel and apartment building, would bring “unrivalled luxury” to the Serbian capital.

Aleksandar Vučić, the authoritarian former Milošević propagandist who has ruled Serbia since 2017, needed allies. Mass protests against corruption were growing. His years cultivating Vladimir Putin had left few friends in the west. But he had some. Jared Kushner had visited months earlier to get the project going. It just needed official approval.

When the agents turned up at Zivkov’s office, she found the security service’s intervention in cultural matters “unusual and worrying”. Ignoring their warning, she spoke out, but to no avail. The site’s protection was annulled. In March, Don Jr flew in for a “cordial conversation”, as Vučić put it, “about bilateral relations between Serbia and the USA”. They chatted warmly on Don’s podcast.

But then Trump Tower Belgrade was thrown into doubt. Mladen Nenadić, the chief organised crime prosecutor, arrested the head of the heritage institute, who confessed to forging paperwork cancelling the site’s protected status. The investigation progressed and a former official implicated senior Vučić allies.

The regime has fought back with a state media vendetta against the prosecutor, who has also charged an ex-minister in a separate case. In early November, the national prosecutors’ office rebuked Vučić for comments about “corrupt gangs” of prosecutors bringing “fabricated cases”, saying the president was “trying to exert unauthorised influence” on the investigation by creating an “atmosphere of lynching”.

On 7 November, Vučić’s supporters in parliament passed a law to smooth the progress of the Trump Tower. That Trump’s family is getting special treatment seems beyond doubt; what is less clear is what, if anything, the Serbian regime has got in return.

Siniša Mali, a finance minister and key Vučić ally, said: “Regarding relations with the new US administration, it is obvious that the [Trump real estate] project had no bearing on recent policy decisions.” Serbia’s 35% rate is at the high end of Trump’s tariffs. In October, the US placed sanctions on the Russian oil company that supplies most of Serbia’s petrol. Allegations of “undue influence”, Mali told the Guardian, were unsupported by evidence.

Among Serbia’s neighbours are other fragile democracies inside and outside the EU, such as Romania and Albania. In recent months, the Trump family has announced property ventures in both. And they have big plans in places whose institutions are weaker still.

‘You scratch my back, I scratch yours’

Eric Trump was showered with gold and silver confetti at May’s groundbreaking ceremony for the family’s new $1.5bn golf resort in Vietnam. Centre-stage beside the prime minister, he looked delighted. In a country where securing the permits for a property development typically requires years of obstruction, the Trump venture had won approval in three months.

“The project has received personal attention from President Donald Trump and his administration,” Vietnamese officials wrote in a document obtained by the New York Times. Making the Trumps wait by sticking to the planning rules would cause a delay that could “negatively affect Vietnam’s … relations with the US, especially with President Donald Trump’s administration”. So scrutiny required by law, including an environmental review, was curtailed.

Trump himself would receive an immediate $5m from a local developer to license the name, the presidential filing shows. By contrast, the authorities are giving villagers whose farms north of Hanoi are to be bulldozed to make way for, among other things, a “nature-themed” golf course, compensation of as little as $12 a square metre and some rice. “We have no right to negotiate,” a farmer in the one-party state told a reporter.

In April, the month before Eric attended the groundbreaking, his father had declared Liberation Day import tariffs. Vietnam faced a steep 46% rate, among the highest. In May, Trump’s trade negotiator held talks with Vietnam’s. Days later, Eric landed, waved at the locals, and proceeded to the groundbreaking. In July, Vietnam became the second country, after the UK, to reach a tariff deal with the US, more than halving its rate to 20%.

No evidence has emerged that the tariff reduction was an explicit reward for business advantages. And the cut came as a relief for the many Vietnamese who depend on its manufacturing export industry. But questions remain. Analysts say this style of dealmaking – which creates the suspicion that political favour is for sale – could set back anti-corruption reforms that had been gaining momentum.

Kimberly Kay Hoang, a Vietnam expert at the University of Chicago and author of Spiderweb Capitalism, said Vietnam’s rulers were “using the same playbook with Trump that they do with China: ‘You scratch my back, I scratch yours, we are going to do these deals and there are going to be a small number of people who are going to benefit.’”

The Trumps have property ventures in India, the Philippines, and South Korea – each a big exporter threatened by his tariffs.

’Crypto capital’

The Trumps’ income in the first half of this year increased 17-fold, from $51m 12 months earlier to $864m, Reuters calculates. Of that, more than 90% came not from real estate but from cryptocurrency. The Trumps’ representatives have questioned those numbers but it is clear that this new frontier is proving remarkably lucrative for them.

When Trump launched World Liberty Financial two months before his re-election, he claimed it would help make “America the crypto capital of the world”. Three of his sons – Don Jr and Eric along with Barron, aged 19, net worth about $150m – are named as co-founders, as was Trump himself until he was sworn in.

Four months into Trump’s second term, World Liberty announced that its USD1 digital currency had been selected for a gigantic transaction. Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, was selling a stake to a United Arab Emirates state-owned fund called MGX. The $2bn price could have been paid in dollars. Instead, Binance would receive two billion freshly minted USD1.

Because USD1 is a stablecoin – crypto pegged to a real currency – World Liberty holds one dollar for each token it issues. It makes money from the interest and investment returns on these reserves. The $2bn jump in the reserves from this one deal could end up making the Trumps’ company tens of millions annually.

Around the same time, Binance’s stratospherically wealthy Chinese-born founder, Changpeng Zhao, asked Trump for something. He had served a four-month sentence in a California prison for violating US laws against money laundering. Prosecutors said that allowing sanctioned Russians, al-Qaida and assorted others to move illicit funds over Binance – which paid a $4bn fine – had caused “significant harm to US national security”.

Upon his release, CZ, as he is known, went home to the UAE. His criminal record looked like an obstacle to re-establishing Binance in the US. He applied for a pardon in May, just as it emerged that the $2bn deal was done with USD1. On 23 October, Zhao posted on X: “Deeply grateful for today’s pardon and to President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice.”

World Liberty’s lawyers told the Guardian it would be taking “extraordinary risks” if it published a “narrative involving a quid pro quo between CZ and President Trump”. There was a sound business case for the Binance stake sale to be done in USD1, they said. They denied reports that Binance had asked the Emiratis to make the payment in USD1, pointing to a statement by the Emiratis that they, not Binance, had selected the cryptocurrency for the transaction.

Asked about Zhao’s pardon, Trump claimed he had “no idea who he is”. He said: “I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of good people.” That may raise questions about whether the pardon was linked to the $2bn deal. The same could be said of the Emirati end of the transaction in USD1. Days later, Trump granted the UAE access to AI chips that are among the most coveted US technology.

The appearance that Trump’s favour can be bought seems to be remaking international relations. In Indonesia, the environment ministry has halted work on a Trump resort. During October’s Gaza summit in Egypt, a hot mic caught Indonesia’s president speaking urgently with Trump, seemingly about his family’s business interests. “Can I meet Eric?” Prabowo Subianto said. “I’ll have Eric call,” Trump replied. “He’s such a good boy.”