John Paulson’s wife and girlfriend showed up at same event days before divorce filing
Just days before the news broke that John Paulson is getting divorced, the hedge-fund billionaire took his wife to a posh awards dinner held in his honor — and his girlfriend showed up, too.
Paulson — who famously made $20 billion shorting the US housing market before the 2008 crash — was seated near the front alongside his wife of 21 years, Jenny Paulson, at the Manhattan Institute’s 2021 Alexander Hamilton Award Dinner at Cipriani 42nd Street, attendees told The Post.
Meanwhile, a few tables back at the Sept. 10 bash sat Alina de Almeida, the 33-year-old Instagram nutritionist who lately has been dating Paulson and sharing his Fifth Avenue apartment, as Page Six revealed last week. Clad in a sleek silver dress, de Almeida told fellow dinner guests she was a “friend” of the 65-year-old Wall Street tycoon, a person at the table told The Post.
De Almeida — whose Instagram feed is loaded with nutrition tips and pictures of her in skimpy workout gear — raised eyebrows at the table as she went on to dish about a past fling with a former Blackstone executive, sources said. According to one attendee, she detailed how the fling with another billionaire, had taken her to a slew of Michelin-starred restaurants across America and Europe.
A certified dietician, de Almeida devotes a special section of her professional website Effective Health to “chelfies” or pictures with her favorite Michelin-starred chefs, including Jean Georges and Guy Savoy and show her at restaurants in New York, Portugal, France, England and Mexico.
A rep for Paulson — whose divorce is expected to cost him billions, as he doesn’t have a prenup and 50-year-old Jenny is said to be in talks with celebrity attorney Robert S. Cohen — declined to comment. The Manhattan Institute declined to comment. De Almeida did not respond to request for comment. Jenny Paulson’s lawyer did not respond to request for comment.
The event was otherwise blasé, insiders said. One source called it an “upscale rubber chicken” affair, adding he was shocked anything of interest could “possibly have happened at that boring dinner.”
Paulson there received the Hamilton Award, which celebrates “leaders not just on the local level, but also at the state and federal levels, who have made remarkable things happen in the realms of public policy, culture, and philanthropy,” according to the MI website. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott also got the award that night.
In a brief, cookie-cutter speech to some 200 attendees, Paulson — who recently has predicted that cryptocurrencies will “go to zero” — touted the benefits of capitalism and took a few jabs at outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, attendees said.