Drummond seeks ownership disclosures from companies behind Inola smelter
OKLAHOMA CITY (Nov. 9, 2026) – Attorney General Gentner Drummond today asked a Rogers County judge to require the two companies behind the proposed heavy-industrial aluminum smelting complex in Inola to answer discovery requests about their ownership, including whether any public official or member of a public official’s family holds a financial interest in the foreign investment behind the project.
On Oct. 22, the same day Drummond filed a motion to begin discovery in the case, Vanity Fair published an excerpt from journalist Matthew Cole’s forthcoming book under the headline “The Art of the Deal: Jared Kushner’s Hacked Phone Revealed His Secret Negotiations – Including More Than $700 Million in Transfers.” The excerpt reports that the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia placed approximately $2 billion, beginning in 2017, into bank accounts for Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Trump and at the time a senior advisor to the president. The excerpt says one of the accounts was held at First Abu Dhabi Bank, chaired by the brother of the United Arab Emirates president, and that the payments were made in exchange for Kushner advancing the Emirates’ interests within the United States government.
“These are allegations, not findings, and the State treats them as such,” Drummond said in today’s filing. “But they are serious allegations about the government that owns sixty percent of this project, and the State is entitled to find out whether they reach (the project). Defendants told the federal court that the venture was secured through a government-to-government partnership between the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The reports describe that same government paying a senior United States official, through a bank chaired by its ruler’s brother, for his influence over United States policy. If any public official or member of a public official’s family holds an interest in, or stands to benefit from, the Emirati investment behind the Inola smelter, that fact bears squarely on issues (that are a part of this case).”
Today’s filing adds requests asking the companies to identify their communications and agreements with Kushner and his investment firm, to state whether he or any affiliated entity holds an interest in or benefits from the project or its Emirati owners, and to identify the source of the funds behind the Emirati investment. It also broadens the State’s requests to reach financial interests held by a public official’s in-laws.
Drummond filed suit in June to stop the smelter’s development. Behind the project are two corporate ventures. Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), a state-owned enterprise of the United Arab Emirates, holds a 60 percent controlling interest. Century Aluminum holds the remaining 40 percent.
The proposed facility, Oklahoma Primary Aluminum, would be the largest primary aluminum production plant ever constructed in the U.S., with a planned capacity exceeding 750,000 metric tons of aluminum per year. Primary aluminum smelting generates hazardous waste streams, consumes significant amounts of electricity and water and is one of the most polluting heavy-industrial activities that exists. The process also causes fluoride to settle on hay and wreaks havoc on cattle, threatening Oklahoma’s single largest agricultural sector. The smelter would occupy about 633 acres along the Verdigris River, within about three miles of Inola’s schools, homes and farms in the Hay Capital of the World.
The project is propelled by an extraordinary infusion of public money, including a federal award of up to $500 million and approximately $255 million in state performance-based rebates.
