Trump's World Liberty Tied to Sanctioned Network

World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by Donald Trump and partly owned by his family, is under renewed scrutiny after a Times investigation found the company partnered with a Southeast Asian blockchain project that had — until weeks before the deal — been promoting a resort connected to individuals later sanctioned for ties to a major transnational criminal network. The partnership, which integrated WLFI's USD1 stablecoin with a project called AB DAO, was announced in November 2025. Nobody at WLFI apparently noticed what the project had been up to.

The AB DAO Partnership WLFI Didn't Fully Vet

The core of the problem is timing. World Liberty Financial says it conducted due diligence before integrating its USD1 stablecoin with AB DAO, a Southeast Asia-based blockchain project. But the Times investigation, published on Monday, April 7, found that WLFI was apparently unaware AB DAO had, until just weeks before the November announcement, been actively promoting a resort project connected to figures tied to Cambodia's Prince Group — an organization U.S. authorities describe as a major transnational criminal network engaged in large-scale fraud.

Coordinated U.S. and U.K. sanctions hit Prince Group founder Chen Zhi and associates shortly before the WLFI-AB DAO partnership was formalized. Those sanctioned individuals had been connected to AB DAO's resort project but were removed after the sanctions dropped. So: WLFI announced a deal with a project that had just quietly scrubbed sanctioned figures from its promotional materials. That's the kind of thing due diligence is supposed to catch.

To be clear — and The Times makes this explicit — there is no suggestion WLFI had any direct contact or relationship with the Prince Group itself. The issue is whether its vetting process was good enough to flag a project that had been entangled with sanctioned individuals mere weeks earlier. Apparently not.

What Did WLFI Actually Know?

Is the USD1 stablecoin linked to sanctioned individuals?

According to the USD1 stablecoin integration announcement, the partnership positioned AB DAO as a flagship deployment in Southeast Asian markets — a region WLFI has been actively targeting. The company launched in September 2024 and has been moving fast to build out partnerships and stablecoin adoption. Moving fast and vetting partners thoroughly don't always go together.

WLFI told the Times it has 'no association or relationship with the sanctioned individuals.' That's a denial, but it's not an explanation of what the due diligence actually looked like — who ran it, what sources they checked, and whether anyone looked at what AB DAO had been doing in the weeks before the deal was signed. CoinDesk reached out for comment and had received no response by publication time.

The real question isn't whether WLFI meant to get entangled with anything sketchy. It's whether a company co-founded by a sitting U.S. president, running a dollar-pegged stablecoin, has the compliance infrastructure to actually catch these things. From the outside, the answer looks shaky.

We have no association or relationship with the sanctioned individuals.

Why Is This Gaining Traction Now?

The AB DAO story doesn't exist in a vacuum. Back in January, the Wall Street Journal reported that a company backed by UAE national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan had quietly agreed to buy a 49% stake in WLFI for $500 million — a deal that closed shortly before Trump returned to office. Legal experts quoted in that report flagged the transaction as 'something unprecedented in American politics,' raising conflict-of-interest concerns that the White House dismissed. The administration denied any impropriety.

Stack that on top of the AB DAO revelation and a picture starts to form: Prince Group sanctions aside, WLFI has now drawn scrutiny over two major external relationships in the span of a few months. One involves the UAE government, the other involves a blockchain project that had ties to figures the U.S. and U.K. deemed serious enough to sanction for transnational fraud.

None of this automatically means WLFI broke any laws. What it does mean is that the governance and vetting processes around a crypto venture tied to the White House are getting a harder look than they probably anticipated — and the answers coming back aren't exactly reassuring. For anyone holding or planning to hold USD1, that's a reputational risk worth watching. Stablecoins live and die on trust, and right now World Liberty Financial is doing a lot of trust-spending.