Kushner Companies Decides to Fight Tenants in State Court Rather Than Reveal Its Investors Identit

https://www.propublica.org/article/kushner-companies-fight-tenants-state-court-reveal-investors-identities

Kushner Companies Decides to Fight Tenants in State Court Rather Than Reveal Its Investors’ Identities
The move follows a federal judge’s ruling in favor of disclosure.

by Alec MacGillis Feb. 9, 4:49 p.m. EST


Jared Kushner’s family real estate company has backtracked on its effort to have a lawsuit filed against it by tenants of its Baltimore-area apartment complexes moved to federal court, after a judge ruled that this transfer would require it to reveal the identities of its investment partners.

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The Beleaguered Tenants of ‘Kushnerville’
Tenants in more than a dozen Baltimore-area rental complexes complain about a property owner who they say leaves their homes in disrepair, humiliates late-paying renters and often sues them when they try to move out. Few of them know that their landlord is the president’s son-in-law.

ProPublica and four other news organizations challenged the motion to keep the list of partners secret. And on Jan. 26, U.S. District Court Judge James K. Bredar ruled against the Kushner request for shielding the partners’ identities.

In that ruling, Bredar set a Feb. 9 deadline for the Kushner affiliates to submit the partners’ names to the court. But instead of doing so, the affiliates filed a short motion in federal court today asking to have the case moved back to the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. The aborted transfer has effectively resulted in a three-month delay in the tenants’ claims being heard.

Kushner Companies’ reluctance to disclose its partners in the complexes, which were purchased in 2012 and the years following, comes amidst new revelations about the company’s international investment ties. The New York Times reported last month that Kushner Companies last spring secured a $30 million equity investment in the Baltimore complexes and others of its holdings from Menora Mivtachim, a large Israeli insurer, just as Jared Kushner was about to make his first official trip to Israel as Trump’s designated broker of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Also last month, a New Yorker article described the Kushner Companies’ aggressive pursuit of Chinese investors in its real estate ventures. There has also been widespread scrutiny of a meeting in December 2016 between Jared Kushner and the head of a Russian state-owned bank, which may or may not have involved the matter of Russian investment in the Kushner Companies’ debt-strapped trophy building in New York, 666 Fifth Avenue.

Asked to elaborate on the decision this afternoon, Kushner Companies spokeswoman Christine Taylor said simply, “Our counsel on this matter has determined that the case should be remanded to state court.”