Eric Trump has signed an agreement limiting how much influence his family's business can exercise over a new bank connected to World Liberty, the crypto venture tied to the Trump family. The agreement was one of the conditions the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency attached when it gave conditional approval to World Liberty Trust Co.'s application for a national trust bank charter.
Under the terms Eric Trump signed on behalf of the entity DT Marks, that company commits not to directly or indirectly try to influence the bank's operations, not to place an officer inside the bank, and to avoid a series of other actions that would give it a hand in day to day management. In effect, the agreement commits the Trump linked entity to acting as a silent investor rather than an active participant in running the bank.
A separate but similar agreement was signed by a businessman with ties to the Abu Dhabi royal family, another investor in World Liberty, suggesting the OCC applied the same influence limits across more than one of the venture's more prominent backers rather than singling out the Trump family entity alone.
The approval and its accompanying restrictions have drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and watchdog groups, some of whom have described a sitting president's family gaining a foothold in the banking system through a linked venture as a significant conflict of interest concern. Supporters of the arrangement point to the signed limits on influence as evidence that regulators built in real safeguards rather than approving the charter without conditions.
Whether those limits prove meaningful in practice will depend on how strictly they are enforced once World Liberty Trust Co. is operating as a chartered bank rather than an application under review. For now, the signed agreements stand as the primary public commitment that the Trump family's stake in the venture will not translate into direct control over how the new bank is run.