Trump-backed DeFi Project World Liberty Financial Investigations Raise More Questions Than Answers

Key Takeaways

• Very small is known astir immoderate of World Liberty Financial’s biggest backers.

• Recent scrutiny has focused connected Aqua 1 Foundation, a mysterious UAE-based entity that purchased $100 cardinal worthy of WLFI.

• DWF Labs’s relation supporting World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin, USD1, has besides raised suspicions.

To detractors, World Liberty Financial (WLFI) is small much than a beforehand for the highest level of corruption—a backmost doorway done which anyone tin transmission funds to the President of the United States and his household with astir nary transparency into wherever the wealth comes from.

Journalists person repeatedly tried to place who is down immoderate of WLFI’s biggest financiers.

But what they uncover typically leads to much questions than answers.

A caller absorption of scrutiny has been Aqua 1 Foundation, an obscure UAE-based entity that purchased $100 cardinal worthy of WLFI’s governance token, WLFI, successful June.

The concern drew attraction not lone due to the fact that of its size, but due to the fact that Aqua 1 was virtually chartless earlier it appeared arsenic 1 of WLFI’s astir important backers.

Beyond a minimalist website and a fistful of property releases, determination is small nationalist grounds of a functioning concern operation.

On Dec. 23, the Financial Times reported that Staff for Democrats connected the House Judiciary Committee conducted searches crossed Emirati firm registries and large fiscal regulators, but failed to uncover immoderate motion of the Foundation’s existence.

This includes the Abu Dhabi Global Market and Dubai International Financial Centre.

According to the FT’s reporting, those searches failed to uncover documentation confirming Aqua 1 Foundation’s ineligible existence.

Beyond WLFI, Aqua 1’s portfolio looks thin.

Its lone different disclosed concern is $20 cardinal successful Above Food Ingredients, a publicly-traded Canadian nutrient exertion steadfast whose halfway merchandise is boil-in-a-bag quinoa.

In aboriginal 2025, Above Food announced a melodramatic pivot distant from nutrient and toward crypto, with plans to get Palm Global Technologies. What followed was a cascade of announcements featuring progressively outlandish figures.

A associated task called Palm Promax Investments claimed entree to $350 cardinal successful gold-based assets, ambitions to tokenize $1.5 trillion successful real-world assets, and later, a stablecoin concern with Burkina Faso involving up to $8 trillion successful mineral reserves.

After promised audits were repeatedly delayed, however, Above Food’s banal has plummeted much than 65% since October.

It is presently trading good beneath the conversion terms connected Aqua 1’s $20 cardinal note.