World Liberty Financial ($WLFI), the crypto company co-owned by the Trump family, announced a partnership with a blockchain network called AB, less than a month after the US government sanctioned more than 140 people and entities tied to what it described as one of Asia’s largest criminal organizations.
But according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), AB’s flagship resort project in East Timor involved three people sanctioned in that crackdown, raising questions about due diligence in Trump-linked crypto deals.
The Partnership and Its Ties to a Sanctioned Report
The collaboration, announced on November 12, 2025, gave AB the right to carry World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin on its blockchain network.
AB’s post on X at the time described it as a move to strengthen the platform’s “DeFi and payments ecosystem.” But the WSJ says the firm had, until recently, also been promoting a planned “blockchain theme resort” in the Southeast Asian nation of Timor-Leste, which had deep ties to people the US Treasury had just blacklisted.
The resort company, AB Digital Technology Resort, was majority-owned by Yang Jian, a Cyprus citizen sanctioned by the US Treasury for allegedly helping Prince Group CEO Chen Zhi develop a separate resort in Palau, described by Treasury as a “predatory investment.”
Yang Yanming, the resort’s general manager, was also sanctioned, as was Shih Ting-yu, a Taiwanese national identified as working on the project. All three were removed from the company shortly after the October 14 sanctions were announced, corporate documents show, and none of them have been charged.
The Prince Group, Cambodia-based and accused by the US government of running at least ten violent scam compounds, is alleged to have stolen billions from victims through “pig butchering” schemes, which are online relationships cultivated over time before the victim’s money is taken.
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Who’s Behind AB and What World Liberty Says
Per the WSJ report, the AB network presents itself as decentralized, with entities in Ireland and the Cayman Islands, but investigators identified two ethnic Chinese businessmen as its central figures: Sui Chenggang, the beneficial owner of AB’s Cayman Islands company, and Lin Xiaofan, a Guangdong-born entrepreneur who travels on a St. Kitts and Nevis passport and, by his own account, introduced Sui to World Liberty executives.
Sui signed an MoU with World Liberty on September 17, 2025, and claims the Timor-Leste resort “was not discussed” during those conversations.
Meanwhile, World Liberty’s lawyers have said the firm carried out due diligence on AB and was “not made aware of the resort or people behind it.” The company said it only learned of AB’s connection to the East Timor project in January 2026.
“Claims attempting to link World Liberty Financial with sanctioned individuals are unfounded and untrue,” the lawyers said.
AB, for its part, stated that the resort was the result of a separate memorandum of understanding that was canceled in November, before reaching “a substantive implementation stage.”
World Liberty has faced scrutiny on other fronts, too. The company has also been sued by Tron founder Justin Sun, who alleged that $WLFI team members froze his tokens and threatened to burn them without justification, a dispute the company says will be settled in court.