Former Trump personal attorney Alina Habba married Turkish investor Turhan Mildon at New York's Waldorf Astoria last month, a $10 million celebration that brought together federal law enforcement leaders and a sprawling Venezuelan business empire now facing serious trouble back in Caracas. In June, before the September wedding, Venezuela's interim government issued an order revoking Mildon's cement contract, citing failure to meet investment targets.
The September wedding, held during UN General Assembly week, cost an estimated $10 million and was attended by FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche, White House Counsel Will Scharf and Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, according to ModernGhana. Singer Nelly performed at the event, and wedding planners said the entire affair came together in under 60 days, according to The New York Times. Habba, 42, is a former personal lawyer to President Trump. She joined the White House at the start of his second term and later served as New Jersey's interim U.S. attorney. Mildon is 25.
A Cement Empire Built on Nationalized Assets
Mildon serves as CEO of Miller Holding, a Turkish conglomerate his grandfather founded in 1967, and chairs its construction arm Milvest, which completed the $290 million Kinshasa Financial Center in the Democratic Republic of Congo in December 2023, according to Forbes reporting cited by the Times. Through his subsidiary Vencement, Mildon struck a 2025 profit-sharing agreement with Venezuela's state-owned Corporación Socialista del Cemento to manage and rehabilitate ten state-seized cement plants that had been nationalized under Hugo Chávez and suffered steep output declines. The Times reports he received the contract to operate those plants from Alex Saab in March 2025.
Mildon told Forbes Turkey he produces 4.5 million tons of cement annually in Venezuela, but the Times reports the country's actual annual cement output is only about one-third of that claimed figure. His spokesman has said Mildon was misquoted in the Forbes Turkey piece. The Venezuelan government also awarded Mildon a shrimp production and export business in western Venezuela in 2025, one it had previously seized from José Enrique Rincón after accusing him of financing the political opposition. Rincón remains in jail, per the Times, and Venezuelan shrimp plants under the new arrangement sold an average of just 5 percent of their pre-takeover shipment volume during the first eight months of the year.
Contract Revoked, Then a Dispute Over the Facts
Interim President Delcy Rodríguez ordered an audit of the state-owned cement plants Mildon operated and, according to a copy of the order seen by the Times, revoked his cement contract in June, before the September wedding, for failing to meet investment targets. Mildon's spokesman disputes this account, saying the government never actually conducted the audit and that the company was not notified of the contract's termination until October 8. His spokesman added that Mildon's cement businesses are still operating and that Mildon believes the termination letter was a mistake he is working to address.
Contractors have complained of unpaid invoices from Mildon's businesses. In a Forbes Turkey interview, Mildon defended his record in Venezuela, saying, “When no one else had the guts to come, one man did and invested millions.”
Ties to Sanctioned Figures and a Broken Engagement
Mildon's path into Venezuelan business ran through his personal connections to the Maduro government. He worked with Nicolás Maduro's government before Maduro was captured by U.S. commandos in January 2026. He became engaged in June 2025 to María Eugenia Ceballos, whose father, former Venezuelan interior minister Remigio Ceballos Ichaso, was placed under U.S. sanctions by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control in November 2019 for blocking humanitarian aid and supporting state-backed political repression, according to a Treasury Department press release. Mildon and Ceballos later ended their relationship.
U.S. aides and intelligence officials expressed concern about Mildon's work with the Maduro government, people briefed on the matter told the Times, and two people involved in discussions said the Trump administration considered sanctions against him. A person familiar with the matter said those sanctions proceedings were shelved after the regime change in Caracas. Mildon's spokesman called the sanctions claim a totally false and malicious rumor, and a U.S. administration official separately disputed that the government ever considered sanctions against him.
From the Kennedy Center to the Oval Office
Mildon also tried to build ties between Alex Saab — whom the U.S. freed in December 2023 in exchange for ten American prisoners after Saab spent over three years in custody on federal money-laundering charges — and Republicans in Trump's orbit. Richard Grenell, Trump's special envoy to Venezuela, introduced Mildon to people in the MAGA movement, and Mildon became a regular at social events organized by Republican insiders and at the Kennedy Center. Habba and Mildon met earlier in the year at a Kennedy Center event and had been dating for months.
Habba met with President Trump in the Oval Office this month, according to the Times, whose reporting on the relationship between Habba and Mildon was based on interviews with more than two dozen people knowledgeable about the events. White House officials said Habba has not discussed her husband's business dealings with Trump or other administration officials, and Habba herself said she has never involved herself with the White House or administration on her husband's behalf.
A Broader Push Into Africa and Washington Back-Channels
Mildon's reach extends well beyond Venezuela. Milvest has undertaken projects and commercial ties in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Mildon grew up in a family with a business background in Turkey. He also became involved in back-channel diplomacy between Washington and Caracas in 2025, and Christopher Ruddy secured a meeting with Delcy Rodríguez in February 2026 that Mildon tagged along to. As Mildon put it in his Forbes Turkey interview, summing up his approach to doing business across two continents: “Now, know-who — who you know — is important.”
The Washington Backdrop
The marriage lands amid a broader reckoning over how long Trump-appointed interim prosecutors can serve without Senate confirmation. Habba resigned as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey in December 2025 after federal court rulings found her extended tenure violated 28 U.S.C. § 546 and the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, a legal fight Hoodline covered in its report on how the 9th Circuit sidelined Nevada's prosecutor on similar grounds. Judges in that line of cases ruled that temporary prosecutor appointments exceeding 120 days without Senate confirmation transfer appointment authority to the local district court, a limit also cited in a separate Hoodline report on legal exposure facing Trump-appointed interim prosecutors nationwide.
Interim President Rodríguez has spoken at a Miami investment summit.
