The mysterious CFO of a mysterious Chinese company with offices in Wuhan, China, was the SPAC CEO who helped Donald J Trump to take his media and tech company public.
Patrick Francis Orlando (49) is the founder of two SPACs – special purposes acquisition companies, also known by blank check companies. They aim to make private businesses public through mergers/acquisitions.
One is Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), where Orlando is the Chief Economist (CEO). This merger with Trump Media and Technology Group sent shares soaring almost 1,000 percent earlier this week.
Trump plans to use the money from the firm to launch his social networking app Truth Social. Trump Media and Technology Group described it as a media powerhouse to compete with the liberal media consortium and fight back to the Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley.
Patrick Francis Orlando (pictured), 49 is helping Donald J Trump to take his media and tech company public. He heads two SPACs as the CEO of Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) and the CFO of mysterious firm Yunhong International, which has offices in Wuhan, China
DWAC’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is a member of Brazil’s national congress and self-proclaimed Brazilian prince Luiz Philippe de Orleans e Braganca (pictured left with Trump). Philippe said that he, like President Trump, believes in fair and balanced bilateral trading, investing in defense and maintaining strong borders.
Meanwhile, DWAC’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is a member of Brazil’s national congress and self-proclaimed Brazilian prince who wishes to restore the royal monarchy by the name of Luiz Philippe de Orleans e Braganca, according to Yahoo Finance.
Philippe was an unofficial monarch of Latin America before he received his Masters from Stanford University. He also worked at a New York City-based bank that invested in Latin America.
The mysterious CEO, who graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with two degrees (MIT), is married to Jennifer. She has two daughters and a toddler.
The activist and politician is now a member of Brazil’s national-conservative PSL party and lives in São Paulo with his wife Fernanda Hara Miguita and son Maximilian.
Philippe stated that he believes in fair and balanced bilateral commerce, investing in defense, and maintaining strong borders, just like President Trump.
While the prince has shared photos of him with Trump on his social media and has very publicly supported the ex-president’s social media venture, The New York Times revealed that Orlando and Trump actually knew each other before making the deal.
Although the nature of their relationship was unclear, Orlando also has ties in the sunshine state with a $1.4million mansion in Miami’s luxe gated community L’Hermitage, where he presumably lives with his wife Jennifer, his two daughters and his toddler son.
The four-bed, four-bath home is located along the water of Biscayne Bay and is surrounded by ‘lush tropical gardens, a huge pool and tennis courts,’ according to a listing of the house.
Like Trump, Orlando also has ties in the sunshine state with a $1.4million mansion (pictured) in Miami’s luxe gated community L’Hermitage
The home, which has four bedrooms and four bathrooms, is located on Biscayne Bay’s waterside. It is surrounded by lush tropical gardens, a large pool, and tennis courts, according to a listing.
Orlando lives in the nearly 4,000-square foot house with Jennifer and their three children.
However, as Trump looks to confirm his ‘lab leak’ theory, which claims that the novel coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, Orlando has seemingly been focusing his attention to the same city, where his other SPAC is headquartered.
Yunhong International is a Cayman Islands-based blank-check company with offices in Wuhan – just 12 miles away from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, where a bombshell report by the Wall Street Journal revealed three Chinese scientists were hospitalized in November 2019.
Although the report did not include raw data, safety logs, or lab records from the Institute’s pretended extensive research with Covid bats, it gave new life to the “lab leak theory”, which was only further complicated by Orlando’s foothold in Wuhan in China.
The Journal confirmed that scientists worked at Wuhan Institute of Virology. They were treated with an illness that resembled Covid weeks prior to the virus ravaging China.
According to Yunhong International’s SEC filing, the company was authorized to have offices China on December 23, 2019. The document was signed by Orlando, as well as Andrey Nivikov, the CEO of the company – a 50 year-old Estonian politician – and Chairman Yubao Li, a 38 year-old Chinese businessman.
Orlando’s SPAC Yunhong International has offices in Wuhan, China, just 12 miles away from away from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology – where a bombshell report by the Wall Street Journal revealed three Chinese scientists were hospitalized in November 2019, which reignited Trump’s ‘lab leak’ theory
After the announcement of Truth Social, the former president’s social media site, Orlando returned to his roots and became a Trump-affiliated banker. This is expected to launch in early 2022.
The document stated that Orlando has been the CFO of Yunhong International since September 2019 and noted that the father-of-three he has an extensive resume in business after graduating with two degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
From April 1998 to December 2002, Orlando was Director of Emerging Markets Derivatives for Deutsche Bank – a bank that served as primary lender to the Trump Organization.
In April 2012, he founded Benessere Enterprises Inc., a firm that specializes investing in and incubating startups involved in real estate. He has been the CEO since then.
Six months later he added the investment bank Benessere Capital LLC to his portfolio and from March 2014 to August 2018 he co-founded the sugar-trading company Sucro Can International LLC and served as the CFO.
Orlando returned to his roots as a Trump-affiliated financier after the news of the former president’s proposed social media site Truth Social.
After he was fired from Facebook and Twitter due to his involvement in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, Trump launched Truth Social. Trump has stated that his long-term goal is to create a conglomerate to go beyond disrupting large media companies, including Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google, to compete with the likes of CNN+ and Disney+.
Trump is the chairman and founder of Trump Media and Technology Group. This media venture aims to disrupt Netflix and other tech giants like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Google.
The social media company is looking to launch by early 2022 and to do so would go through a public merger with Orlando’s DWAC before next year’s mid-term elections, according to Yahoo.
According to the news site, Trump would be able to reach millions of supporters through the merger if everything goes according to plan. This would be possible because of his social media ban.
Hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein (pictured) said he sold shares in DWAC after learning of its merger with Trump’s new media company
In September, DWAC raised $230 million from a number of hedge funds – DE Shaw and Highbridge Capital Management, Lighthouse Investment Partners, Saba Capital Management – to assist in making Trump Media and Technology Group publicly available.
Yesterday Lighthouse Investment Partners, Saba Capital, and Saba Capital withdrew shares of DWAC despite the stock soaring 300% on Friday.
Boaz Weinstein, who owns Saba Capital worth $3.5billion and was named in Forbes’ top 40 most earning hedge fund managers, announced that he was selling his stake. He stated that he knew it was the right thing for Saba to sell all of their unrestricted shares. This is what we have done.
“Many investors are asking difficult questions about how to incorporate their values into work. This was not a close call for us.
His firm sold much of its stake early Thursday morning, making a small profit before the shares soared higher. They owned 9.3 per cent of the SPAC at 2.4million shares.
Meanwhile, Lighthouse Investment Partners had owned 3.2million shares – or 11 percent. According to the fund, Lighthouse Investment Partners did not know of the merger and no longer holds restricted shares of the SPAC.