Qatari royal invested about $50 million in conservative network Newsmax - in exchange: more favorable coverage

[essentialsaltes]

Before and after the investment, senior newsroom leaders urged Newsmax staff to soften coverage of Qatar, current and former employees said​

A member of the Qatari royal family invested roughly $50 million in Newsmax, according to documents and representatives for the media company and the royal, in a moment of acute Middle East tensions during the Trump administration. The investment bolstered a key conservative media outlet at a time when Qatar was facing intense diplomatic pressure from its neighbors and seeking allies in the United States.

At the time the investment was made, a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had established a diplomatic and economic blockade against Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorist groups across the Middle East. Qatar had counted on its relationship with the United States for protection, but President Donald Trump initially sided with its regional rivals, praising their move in 2017 and criticizing Qatar for funding terrorism.

In 2019 and 2020, Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani, a former Qatari government official and the owner of a London-based investment fund, Heritage Advisors, invested in Newsmax. The investment has not been previously reported. [The stake was later transferred to a corporate entity in the Cayman Islands.]

The $50 million investment represents a significant minority stake in Newsmax, a privately held media company estimated to be worth between $100 million and $200 million, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The documents came from a trove of roughly 100,000 leaked files from Genesis Trust, a Cayman Islands-based financial services provider, which were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and reviewed by The Washington Post.

Among the documents were internal forms prepared by Genesis that proposed the corporate structure would be “set up with the intention of benefiting the State of Qatar.”

[A law firm representing the Sheikh's investment fund] said that the forms were erroneous and that [the Cayman Islands company] was not set up with the intention of benefiting Qatar.

Before and after Sultan’s investment, the outlet’s top editorial brass urged staff to soften on-air coverage of Qatar, including by avoiding discussion of the nation’s human rights record and treatment of migrant labor ahead of it hosting the World Cup in 2022, according to two Newsmax employees at the time who witnessed the exchanges and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering the Newsmax CEO.

“We were not allowed to criticize Qatar,” one of these people said. “We were told very clearly from the top down, no touching this.” [CEO Christopher] Ruddy verbally reprimanded a host in 2018 for her on-air comments about Qatar, according to two other people who saw the exchange.

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It's a long and far-ranging article with lots of interesting angles, including other efforts by Qatar to improve its standing with conservatives and the Trump Administration.

According to a report released on Jan. 4 by House Democrats, the Qatari government paid over $460,000 during Trump’s presidency to Trump World Tower in New York City for properties it owned, and in 2018 members of Qatar’s ruling family spent more than $280,000 at Washington, D.C.’s Trump International Hotel. In August 2018, a firm that had received significant financial backing from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund also bailed out a company controlled by the family of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, on a troubled Manhattan real estate investment.