Trump’s Sons Enter Kazakhstan’s Subsoil Project With U.S. Government Money

The sons of U.S. President Donald Trump — Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — have joined a Kazakh tungsten project that received $1.6 billion in state support from the U.S. administration, Orda.kz reports, citing the Financial Times.

According to the FT, the Trump brothers bought shares in the construction company Skyline Builders Group in August last year through a special intermediary company linked to Dominari Securities. On Sept. 22, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said at a meeting with Trump that he planned to transfer a major tungsten project to the American investment group Cove Kaz Capital. The company was competing for the deposit with Chinese and Russian bidders.

After details of the Tokayev-Trump agreement appeared in the press on Oct. 21, the president’s sons increased their position in Skyline on Oct. 28 by investing nearly $24 million in a private placement. Then, on Oct. 31, Skyline agreed to pay $20 million for a 20% stake in a company that owns “significant assets in the field of critical minerals in Asia.” That company turned out to be Kaz Resources, a division of Cove Capital.

On Nov. 6, during a White House summit, Cove Capital and Kazakhstan’s national mining company announced a deal to develop what they called “the largest undeveloped tungsten deposit in the world.” The project concerns the Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty deposits in central Kazakhstan. Cove Kaz received a 70% stake in the project.

On April 30, Skyline announced a merger with Cove Kaz Capital and Kaz Resources. The new company will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker KAZR. The Trump brothers were not mentioned in the press release.

The Export-Import Bank and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation allocated up to $1.6 billion to the project. Tungsten is a strategic metal for the defense industry, and the United States has not produced it since 2015, relying instead on supplies from China.

A representative for Donald Trump Jr. told the FT that he is a “passive investor” and does not interact with the federal government on behalf of the companies in which he invests. Eric Trump did not respond to the newspaper’s requests. The White House also did not comment.

Original author: Ruslan Loginov

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