Canadian investment firm Brookfield, formerly chaired by Liberal leader Mark Carney has close business ties to the Trump family.
In 2018, Brookfield agreed to lease a New York City property from Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. The lease was for a 99-year billion-dollar agreement, which saw the company forking over the full USD $1.1 billion upfront, instead of paying it off annually.
Kushner served as the White House senior advisor to Trump during the time of the Brookfield deal and also dealt with the administration’s relationship to the Middle East, visiting Qatar to discuss its blockade against the U.S., which was eventually lifted.
Brookfield’s second-largest stakeholder during this time was the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, which helped to finance the billion-dollar deal.
The deal was brokered in 2018, before Carney became chair of Brookfield and at a time when Kushner’s family was in debt to repay USD $1.2 billion in mortgage payments by February 2019.
Carney, who still holds $6.8 million in Brookfield financial interests, spoke with Trump for the first time since he took office over the phone Friday, which Carney called “cordial” and “substantive.”
Trump also displayed newfound respect and diplomacy towards Canada following the conversation, saying it was “extremely productive.”
It was a dramatic change in tone considering only one day prior Carney announced that Canada’s relationship with the U.S. was “over.”
“The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperations, is over,” Carney said Thursday. “What exactly the United States does next is unclear, but what is clear is that we as Canadians have agency, we have power. We are masters in our own home.”
Carney and Trump now appear to be on good footing with plans to meet immediately after the election “to work on elements of politics, business, and all other factors,” noted the U.S. president.
Some speculate that their positive relationship could be tied to Carney’s help in “stonewalling” the U.S. Senate Finance Committee’s investigation into the Brookfield-Kushner deal regarding the $1.1 billion cheque.
Information was requested of Brookfield in 2022, while Carney was at the helm, by the committee but it was never handed over.
Committee chairman Sen. Ron Wyden sent a letter that year to Brookfield’s Bay Street office in Toronto requesting “detailed information from Brookfield to understand the process by which Brookfield paid Kushner Companies $1.2 billion in 2018 to sign a 99-year lease on the 666 Fifth Avenue property in Manhattan.”
However, Brookfield, chaired by Carney, “twice declined to provide the Committee this information, instead stonewalling on whether it intentionally misled the public on its decision to use the Qatari-backed BPY to invest in a Kushner property, despite statements indicating it would avoid doing so due to conflicts of interest.”
The committee was seeking answers to specific questions regarding “whether Brookfield was aware that members of the Kushner family were holding discussions with Qatari government officials and businessmen.”
Additionally, the senators wanted to know “whether the Qatari Investment Authority or the Qatari government were made aware that Brookfield was negotiating with Kushner Companies regarding the transaction.”
True North contacted the Prime Minister’s Office and the Liberal Party of Canada to request comment on the situation but did not receive a response.