US President Donald Trump's eldest sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. have a 20% stake in the company, which received $1.6 billion in federal funding and will mine tungsten in Kazakhstan, writes The New York Times (NYT).
According to the publication, an agreement signed last fall between the United States and Kazakhstan gave a group of American investors associated with the White House access to one of the world's largest undeveloped tungsten reserves. For this purpose, as RTVI.US reported, the American and Kazakh sides announced the creation of a joint venture.
According to the NYT, during the negotiations the American company faced serious competition from at least one Chinese state-owned corporation, which was willing to pay a price above the market price. Beijing has already invested in Kazakhstan's tungsten industry, providing 81% of global metal production.
A few weeks after the negotiations, investors from Dominari Securities, located in Trump Tower in New York and partly owned by the two eldest sons of the US president, along with other partners acquired a 20 percent stake in the company, the NYT notes. At the same time, Dominari hired Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as paid consultants, giving them shares worth about $7 million immediately after their father returned to the White House.
In the fall of 2025, the investment company Cantor Fitzgerald, controlled by the family of US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and headed by his sons Brandon and Kyle, helped Dominari Securities with the deal, the publication continues. According to the underwriting agreement, that is, minimizing risks for all parties, the company helped raise $210 million in new capital for a major investor.
The New York Times characterizes such actions by the sons of Trump and Latnick as “an ethically ambiguous pursuit of profit by families.” A similar idea was expressed in a conversation with the publication by Congresswoman from Oregon, Democrat Maxine Dexter, who heads the House of Representatives commission investigating allegations of violations in the mining industry.
“Transactions like this are a warning sign. Congress must ensure that taxpayer money is used to benefit the public and not to benefit family members or those closely associated with the Trump administration,” Dexter said.
At the same time, Kazakhstan also positively assesses potential cooperation between Astana and Washington. Also, Kazakhstan currently produces 21 of 34 critically important types of raw materials for the European Union, the Kazinform agency clarifies.
According to Olzhas Alibekov, deputy chairman of the Industrial Development Committee in the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development of Kazakhstan, the country can produce and process 25 of the 60 goods included in the US list of critical minerals, the NYT emphasizes. Tungsten, in particular, is needed to make missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other electronics.
At the moment, as the publication writes, citing a representative of the Trump administration, the $1.6 billion in financial support allocated by the US government for the Kazakh mining project has not been used, since the project requires additional approvals.
However, according to federal documents, both Cantor Fitzgerald and Dominari Securities received funds from the administration. They were both paid for their services in raising new capital for executives involved in a series of transactions, NYT adds.
