« Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States, » the company told Chinese investors last May.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into the Kushner Companies’ use of an obscure and controversial visa program that lets foreign investors effectively buy an immigration visa to the U. S., The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
The company, which is owned by the family of senior White House advisor and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, received a subpoena last May for information related to its use of the EB-5 visa program, according to the report, which is based on anonymous sources “familiar with the matter.” The news follows on a report in The Wall Street Journal last August that The Kushner Companies received a similar subpoena from the U. S. Attorney’s Office in New York.
“Kushner Cos. utilized the program, fully complied with its rules and regulations, and did nothing improper,” general counsel Emily Wolf said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal at the time. “We are cooperating with legal requests for information.”
The SEC investigation is being run out of the commission’s Texas office, in cooperation with the U. S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, The Journal reports.
Jared Kushner came under fire last May after The Washington Post reported on a pitch his sister, Nicole Kushner, made to investors in Beijing for the family’s “Kushner 1” development in New Jersey. That event was organized by the Chinese company Qiaowai.
“Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States,” a brochure for the event reportedly declared.
The coveted EB-5 has been nicknamed “the golden visa.” To qualify, an investor generally has to front at least $1 million. But Kushner 1 and other Kushner Companies properties take advantage of a Targeted Employment Area program that lets investors qualify for an EB-5 if the invest just $500,000 in a development located in an area of high unemployment.
