For a man with no formal role in the White House, Jared Kushner last week literally took centre-stage as Donald Trump’s emissary to the Middle East.

As the administration took a victory lap for hammering out a Gaza ceasefire last week, Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, stood in Tel Aviv’s ‘hostages square’, addressing a feverish crowd that had booed the mention of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and later broke into chants of: “Thank You Trump!”

It was a strong diplomatic sentiment for a man whose boss had threatened to unleash “hell” in Gaza. But the soft-spoken heir to his father’s real estate empire has quietly become a key conduit for Trump’s outreach to the Middle East, leveraging his Rolodex of leaders in the region and positioning himself to win a lucrative windfall if the goal of redeveloping Gaza ever comes to fruition.

Now, Kushner, who manages billions of dollars in investments including from Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in his investment company Affinity Partners, sits at the nexus of power in Washington DC.

“Of course there’s an enormous conflict of interest here,” said Matt Duss, the executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy, who described the influence-peddling in the administration as open corruption.