White House senior adviser Jared Kushner's family business encouraged wealthy Chinese citizens to "invest $500,000" in their real estate empire and then be allowed to immigrate to the United States.
That was the message for an event held Saturday in a ballroom full of wealthy Chinese investors at the Ritz-Carlton in Beijing, The Washington Post reported.
Kushner's sister, Nicole Meyer, encouraged those in the ballroom to invest in her family's New Jersey real estate project and get an investor visa in return.
The visa, known as the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, gives foreign investors the opportunity to invest in projects in the U.S and then lets them apply to immigrate to the U.S. The program has been used by both the Trump and Kushner family businesses.
The investor visa program is extremely popular among very rich Chinese eager to get their families -- and their wealth -- out of China.
The event was hosted by the Qiaowai Group, the leading brand of China's immigration industry, which is working to get funding for Kushner 1, a family project in New Jersey which includes two towers, 1,476 luxury apartments and a medical center for pets. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2018. Chinese investors are already major funders of Kushner projects in New Jersey and around New York City.
The New York Times reports that Ms. Meyer said the project "means a lot to me and my entire family." She also mentioned her brother's service as chief executive of Kushner Companies.
"This project has stable funding, creates sufficient jobs and guarantees the safety of investors' money," the description of the project said. The tagline on a brochure for the event: "Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States." The brochure made note of the Kushner family's "celebrity" status, but did not mention the president specifically.
Not all attendees were convinced. One Chinese investor who attended the event, Wang Yun, told The Post: "Even though this is the project of the son-in-law's family, of course it is still affiliated. 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."
The Washington Post reporter was then asked to leave because the presence of foreign reporters threatened the "stability" of the event.
Javier Hernandez, China correspondent for the New York Times, reported that he tried to ask Nicole Kushner whether $150 million in Chinese investment posed a conflict of interest and was told to "Leave us alone!"
