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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, May 7, 2017
In a Beijing ballroom, Kushner family flogs $500,000 ‘investor visa’ to wealthy Chinese
The event
was hosted by the Chinese company Qiaowai, which connects U.S. companies
with Chinese investors. (Emily Rauhala/The Washington Post)
By Emily Rauhala May 6 at 7:31 AM
BEIJING — The Kushner family came to the
United States as refugees, worked hard and made it big — and if you
invest in Kushner properties, so can you.
That was the message delivered Saturday by White House senior adviser
Jared Kushner’s sister to a ballroom full of wealthy Chinese investors,
renewing questions about the Kushner family’s business ties to China.
Over several hours of slide shows and presentations, representatives
from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at the
Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of
dollars in a New Jersey real estate project to secure what’s known as an
investor visa.
The EB-5 immigrant investor visa program,
which allows foreign investors to invest in U.S. projects that create
jobs and then apply to immigrate, has been used by both the Trump and
Kushner family businesses.
But President Trump’s vow to crack down on immigration, as well as
criticism from members of Congress, has led to questions about the
future of a program known here as the “golden visa.”
The EB-5 has been extremely popular among
rich Chinese who are eager to get their families — and their wealth —
out of the country, though the fact that some move their money out
illegally has made the program unpopular with the Chinese government,
too.
In the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton on Saturday, Chinese investors were
advised to invest sooner rather than later in case the rules change.
“Invest early, and you will invest under the old rules,” one speaker
said.
The woman identified as “Jared’s sister” was believed to be Nicole
Kushner, who is involved in the family business, not Dara Kushner, who
generally stays out of the spotlight. But the woman’s face was not
clearly visible from the back of the ballroom, where reporters were told
to remain.
Saturday’s event in Beijing was hosted by the Chinese company Qiaowai,
which connects U.S. companies with Chinese investors. The tagline on a
brochure for the event: “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United
States.”
Qiaowai is working with Kushner to secure funding for Kushner 1, a real
estate project in New Jersey. Promotional materials tout the buildings’
proximity to Manhattan and note that the project will create more than
6,000 jobs.
“This project has stable funding, creates sufficient jobs and guarantees the safety of investors’ money,” one description reads.
Although there was no visible reference to Trump, the materials noted
the Kushner family’s “celebrity” status. Wang Yun, a Chinese investor
who attended the event, said the Kushner family’s ties to Trump, via
son-in-law Jared, were a part of the project’s appeal — but also a
source of concern.
Jared
Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law but he's also one of his
key confidants. Here's a closer look at the president's senior advisor. (Video: Deirdra O'Regan/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“Even though this is the project of the son-in-law’s family, of course it is still affiliated,” Wang.
Wang reasoned that the link to Trump would be a boon if the presidency
goes well but could be disastrous if it does not: “We heard that there
are rumors that he is the most likely to be impeached president in
American history. That’s why I doubt this project.”
Many of the people who attended the event declined to be interviewed,
citing privacy concerns, or were blocked by organizers from speaking to
the news media.
Though the event was publicly advertised in Beijing, the hosts were exceptionally anxious about the presence of reporters.
Journalists were initially seated at the back of the ballroom, but as
the presentations got underway, a public-relations representative asked
The Washington Post to leave, saying the presence of foreign reporters
threatened the “stability” of the event.
At one point, organizers grabbed a reporter’s phone and backpack to try
to force that person to leave. Later, as investors started leaving the
ballroom, organizers physically surrounded attendees to stop them from
giving interviews.
Asked why reporters were asked to leave, a public-relations
representative, who declined to identify herself, said simply, “This is
not the story we want.”