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Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner pay $15,000 a month to rent home from billionaire suing US government

Washington couple's landlord is a Chilean billionaire suing the government over a multi-billion dollar mine

Maya Oppenheim
Tuesday 04 April 2017 15:41 BST
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The couple live just a few hundred yards from the Obamas and the upmarket area is also home to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
The couple live just a few hundred yards from the Obamas and the upmarket area is also home to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (Getty)

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are paying $15,000 a month for their opulent Washington DC mansion.

The so-called power couple, who are both unpaid advisors to President Donald Trump, are renting a $5.5 million home in the affluent Kalorama neighbourhood of Washington. Ms Trump, the president’s second child who is said to be his “favourite”, and Mr Kushner relocated from New York to Washington around the time of the inauguration.

According to documents obtained by Wall Street Journal, the monthly rent equates to around 2.5 per cent of the home’s value after subtracting roughly $40,000 in insurance and taxes generally paid by a landlord.

Local brokers said the couple’s rent for the six-bedroom property, which also houses their three children, tallies with similar properties in the exclusive neighbourhood but the rental agreement is a poor deal for their foreign billionaire landlord. Joshua Adler, who owns a number of DC properties, said the rate is a “terrible investment” for Luksic.

Ms Trump and Mr Kushner’s landlord is a Chilean billionaire suing the government over a multi-billion dollar mine. Andrónico Luksic is locked in a legal dispute with the federal government and lobbying them to give the green light for a huge and environmentally controversial mine in Minnesota.

The Obama administration blocked the proposed mining project in its latter days in power, citing environmental concerns.

The connection between the foreign billionaire and the first daughter and Mr Kushner brings up further questions over Mr Trump’s family ties to corporations across the world and its potential to corrupt the administration.

But both the White House and Mr Luksic’s representatives have said there is no relationship between the house rental and the mining dispute and insist the rental was arranged through brokers without the two parties ever meeting in person.

Ms Trump, a former executive of the Trump organisation, and Mr Kushner, a former property developer, are not the only high profile names in Kalorama. The couple live just a few hundred yards from the Obamas and the upmarket area is also home to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Ms Trump recently sparked fury among her neighbours for disrupting the area with heavy security. At the end of last month, local residents expressed anger the first daughter’s family take up much of the parking space on an already overcrowded street and leave garbage bags on the side of the road for days.

They claimed Ms Trump requires three vans of security staff just to make a journey to the playground and footpaths have been closed and public parking taken over by secret service agents.

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace was among those who turned up to complain about parking problems at a neighbourhood meeting.

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