On September 5, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner sat down with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Earlier dispatch → That dispatch noted Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov saying the talks ranged into Russia-U.S. projects "in considerable detail." The New York Times now reports what at least one of those projects was. According to three people familiar with the meeting, Putin brought up the sale of Lukoil's international assets and proposed it get done as a way of showing Russians that they can do business with the United States. The Americans said they would work on it.
The assets are oil fields, refineries in the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Romania, and gas stations from Cameroon to New Jersey. Lukoil valued them at around $20 billion earlier this year. The U.S. sanctioned Lukoil in October 2025, saying it was pressure on Putin to "stop the killing." The sanctions forced the sale. U.S. approval would release the assets from those sanctions, which the NYT notes would instantly raise their value.
The Hats
Start with the hats, because that is what the reporting shows.
Hat one: decision maker. The sale needs Treasury approval. A Treasury spokeswoman told the Times that OFAC "implements foreign policy as determined by the White House," and people involved told the paper the key decisions are being made there. Russia's side is similar: Lukoil is technically private, but the decision is widely seen in Moscow as Putin's. The NYT's own summary is that the deal "comes down to Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump."
Hat two: negotiator. A senior administration official confirmed to the Times that Kushner and Witkoff helped negotiate the financial terms of the U.S. government's investment, to make sure it included "a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States." The two men who talk to Putin about ending the war are also shaping the money terms of a deal Putin raised with them.
Hat three: buyer. The Financial Times reported on September 23 that the group assembled by Todd Boehly to take the assets from Carlyle includes the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, expected to take a stake in the mid-teens. Boehly and the DFC would control a board majority. The same agency that finances projects abroad on behalf of the government would be co-owner of formerly sanctioned Russian assets, with the sanction decided by the same White House.
In ordinary practice those would be three separate offices that do not share a boss. Here they share the same principals.
The Bidders
The FT reports the group is led by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed's International Holding Company alongside the UAE's Allied Investment Partners, with a smaller stake for Qatar's Al-Khayyat family, and Boehly and the DFC holding the majority of the board. Each name connects back to the people in the Kremlin room.
Todd Boehly. Co-owner of the Dodgers, little oil-and-gas experience per the NYT. FEC records show two $1 million contributions from Boehly, with Eldridge Industries listed as his employer, to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc.: one on December 18, 2024 and one on December 31, 2025. The NYT describes a total of $2 million to Trump's political causes, and characterizes the second $1 million as MAGA Inc. and a further $1 million as going to the inauguration through Eldridge. This dispatch counts only what the FEC pull shows and makes no claim about how the NYT's breakdown reconciles with it.Donors →
The Al-Khayyat brothers. The Qatar-based family attended Trump's 2025 inauguration and have since formed a partnership with Kushner and Ivanka Trump to finance the luxury resort in southern Albania. A meeting between Ramez Al-Khayyat and Ivanka Trump in Albania earlier this year was reported by the Times. That partnership, and the family's reported $11 billion in Syrian government contracts, is already covered in Part 5 →. The Lukoil bid is a third project for the same partners.
Sheikh Tahnoon. UAE national security adviser. The NYT reports that a fund he controls bought a large stake in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto company co-founded by Witkoff and now run in part by Witkoff's son, and that a Tahnoon affiliate made a $2 billion crypto purchase in 2025. The Times says World Liberty generated $799 million for Trump last year. Two separate transactions sit under those headlines, and they should not be added together: the $2 billion is MGX's March 2025 investment in Binance, settled in the World Liberty USD1 stablecoin, and the WLFI equity stake is a separate $500 million for 49%, signed in January 2025. Tahnoon also helps oversee Lunate, which the Times lists among the largest stakeholders in Kushner's private equity firm, Affinity Partners.Orbit →
The Times says a Witkoff spokeswoman stated he "has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter," and that a person close to Witkoff says he has sold his World Liberty stake. The Times also says there is no indication that Kushner or Witkoff themselves stand to profit. The Old Goat takes both statements as reported. The problem under review is a different one.
What It Is, and What It Is Not
Nothing documented here says Kushner or Witkoff will make a dollar from Lukoil. The structure does not need that to be true to be a problem. The people deciding whether the assets are freed from sanctions, and on what terms, have existing, documented business relationships with the biggest parties that would profit from the freeing. Hui Chen, a former Justice Department prosecutor and ethics adviser, called the set of entanglements "alarming" and said it forces the question of whether personal interests wrongly influence which bidder wins. The administration's answer, offered to the Times, is that the DFC stake means "a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States" and lower energy prices.
The two claims are not mutually exclusive. A deal can pay the Treasury and still be shaped around the people who sit on both sides of it. What sets this apart from earlier entries in the Joint Economic Ventures thread is the third hat. Before September, the pattern was private money circling public negotiators. In this case the government is itself a buyer, so the party that grants the license is also a counterparty to the transaction it is licensing.
The Clock
Two OFAC dates are fixed. General License 131J, the license that lets buyers negotiate and sign contracts for Lukoil International GmbH contingent on a separate OFAC authorization, expires at 12:01 a.m. EDT on October 22, 2026. It does not authorize the sale itself. General License 128C (Lukoil retail stations outside Russia) and 130A (Lukoil entities in Bulgaria) run to October 29. The NYT says Treasury has had to issue repeated extensions because no deal is final. Whatever happens next either arrives by those dates, or the licenses get pushed again.
The other pressure is the fuel market. The Times notes that Lukoil's refineries in the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Romania make diesel and jet fuel, products in short supply since the Iran war began. On October 2 the G7 agreed to a 100-million-barrel emergency stock release with diesel front-loaded. Diesel scarcity gives the administration a reason to want the refineries back in friendly hands. That is a legitimate reason, and the Old Goat flags it as INFERENCE that it also supplies the cover for a deal that would be questioned in a calmer year.
The government sanctioned the asset, the government decides whether to unsanction it, and the government is putting money into the buyer's group. Three hats, one head table.
Carlyle's non-exclusive January agreement is still the only signed paper, and it has sat for months without Treasury approval. Watch whether it dies on its own as the Boehly group's version advances, and whether the Treasury explains why one bid stalled and the other, with a government stake, moved. The Old Goat will be watching for that explanation, and for what OFAC does on October 22 and October 29.