Posted on 07/09/2023 9:00:04 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Government officials are investigating nearly $1 billion in land purchases near Travis Air Force Base in California due to concerns of possible foreign influence that led to an Air Force Foreign Investment Risk Review Office’s probe. If you’re already thinking Bill Gates or China, you’re likely not alone.
At the center of the probe is “Flannery Associates,” a “mysterious” investor group that has acquired nearly 52,000 acres of agricultural land in the state in the last five years to become the largest landowner in California’s Solano County, according to county officials and public records, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Friday.
After eight months of digging, officials have been unable to uncover the investors behind the deal.
An attorney representing Flannery insists the group is controlled by American citizens and that 97 percent of its investment capital comes from U.S. investors, with the remaining 3 percent coming from British and Irish investors. Flannery previously told Solano County the entity “is owned “by a group of families looking to diversify their portfolio from equities into real assets, including agricultural land in the western United States.”
“Any speculation that Flannery’s purchases are motivated by the proximity to Travis Air Force Base” is unfounded, the attorney for the firm told the WSJ.
Uh-huh— color me skeptical. For now, at least. Here’s more, via the WSJ:
The Air Force’s Foreign Investment Risk Review Office has been investigating Flannery’s purchases of roughly 52,000 acres, including around Travis Air Force Base, according to people familiar with the matter. But the office, which has been looking into the matter for about eight months, has yet to be able to determine who is backing the group, one of the people said.
California Democrat Rep. John Garamendi, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel, is also skeptical of the massive purchases near Travis.
We don’t know who Flannery is, and their extensive purchases do not make sense to anybody in the area. The fact that they’re buying land purposefully right up to the fence at Travis raises significant questions.
Solano County supervisor Mitch Mashburn said if Flannery intends to develop the land, it would make sense for the group to engage with local officials, but it has yet to do so.
The majority of the land they’re purchasing is dry farmland. I don’t see where that land can turn a profit to make it worth almost a billion dollars in investment.
Bingo. The base commander and other officers “are aware of the multiple land purchases near the base and are actively working internally and externally with other agencies,” a spokesperson told the WSJ.
Flannery has offered various explanations for its purchases over time. In 2019, Flannery attorney Richard Melnyk said in an email to a Solano County official that Flannery planned to work with local farmers and might explore “new types of crops or orchards,” he said, ruling out any cannabis operations.
In its May price-fixing lawsuit, Flannery said it planned to use the land for renewable energy and related projects. The entity has allowed many sellers to continue farming or remain on the land and collect income from wind turbine leases for the remainder of the lease, according to court filings.
Yet five years into the deal, zero crops, orchards, or windmills. Why?
As I suggested at the top, it’s not unreasonable to consider China. As I reported in July 2021, nearly 30 million acres of U.S. farmland were owned by foreign countries as of May 28, 2019. Among those acres, Chinese owners controlled about 192,000 agricultural acres in the U.S., worth $1.9 billion, including land used for farming, ranching, and forestry, according to the Agriculture Department.
And according to Forbes, the number has since grown to roughly 384,000 acres. Of that, 195,000 acres, worth almost $2 billion when purchased, are owned by 85 Chinese investors— which could be individuals, companies, or the ChiCom government.
So why China has continued to acquire U.S. land at a record clip raises the musical question: Why in the hell is a communist dictatorship, whose stated goal is world domination, allowed to buy anything in the U.S., let alone massive parcels of farmland? While I can’t prove China is involved in this particular deal, it’s completely reasonable to investigate whether it is.
As for Bill Gates, who owned roughly 275,000 acres of farmland in the U.S. as of the end of 2022, according to the 2022 edition of the Land Report 100, the multibillionaire insists there’s nothing nefarious behind his ownership of the land:
I own less than 1/4000 of the farmland in the US. I have invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs. There isn’t some grand scheme involved — in fact, all these decisions are made by a professional investment team
So why is it Gates’s full-time job? The co-founder of Microsoft wrote in 2021:
My investment group chose to do this. It is not connected to climate.
The agriculture sector is important. With more productive seeds we can avoid deforestation and help Africa deal with the climate difficulty they already face. It is unclear how cheap biofuels can be but if they are cheap it can solve the aviation and truck emissions.
Fine. But to borrow from the 1984 Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” ad campaign, Where’s [sic ] the seeds?
Where are the biofuels? I’m far from a conspiracy loon, but questions like these, and larger questions about massive land purchases near sensitive government facilities, should not only be answered; they should also be disallowed.
Hell, maybe we’ll get a clue of who’s behind the Travis Air Base deal and why if a “harmless weather balloon” is suddenly launched from the “mysteriously purchased” land.
I’d love to see the property condemned and absorbed into the base.
“Officials Can’t Figure out Who They Are”
Sequester the land, and wait to see who screams.
As long as Red China has the Biden Crime Family in its pocket, it can do anything it wishes.
52000 acres is about 81 square miles.
That would be a square 9 miles on a side, if all in one place, but it seems to be spread out in parcels, all over.
That is a lot of room to hide military and intel stuff.
Oh, that is a corn silo. That is a cow shed. That is a cloths line wire. That is a crop duster plane.
I was at Travis for 4 years. It’s almost all farmland around it. If they can’t figure out who these people are, maybe they are Chinese. The Grand Forks city council put a stop to Chinese buying land near Grand Forks, ND. Foreigners should not be allowed to buy land in America.
Put out on Q-anon that some J6 grandma is behind it.
There will be quick action. (Well, no. Joe is in on it.)
Flannery Associates.
You know. Good Irish People. By was of Guangzhou.
It’s a gimmick you see a lot in Europe....shell companies, post-office-box companies. Whoever bought it...spent near a billion.
I have two theories: lot of private Chinese are looking for places now to take their money out of China (failing economy) and looking for massive ways to just ‘store’ their money.
My second theory is that some Soros group bought it, and intends to dry down....to find the soil contaminated, and try to force the closure of the base.
lot of private Chinese are looking for places now to take their money out of China (failing economy) and looking for massive ways to just ‘store’ their money.
————
Not likely, at least for an ordinary Chinese citizen. The one I know is not allowed to transfer his money out of country. He took a trip to Hawaii, found a condo for half a mil, but couldn’t get his money out of China to buy it.
Maybe there are ways around it, but he couldn’t do it.
About two weeks ago, there was some report which alleged around 14,000 Chinese millionaires have departed before spring of 2023. Those are the folks I’m referring to.
On the value of this property...nothing says it’ll decrease, and if you wanted to sell your asset in five years...it’s likely to gain 10-to-20 percent over current value.
I would also add...if the Air Force and FBI can’t figure out the investment path....pretty good chance that Chinese secret police would also not be capable of figuring this out.
Question:
Isn’t there PLENTY OF LAND IN CHINA FOR THESE WEIRDOS TO BE BUYING LAND.
STAY THE HE!! OUT OF OUR BELOVED COUNTRY.
WHY DO THEY NEED OUR LAND?
Oh yeah and they can’t imagine WHO COULD HAVE BROUGHT COCAINE INTO THE WHITE HOUSE.
Can you imagine how the families of these DOJ and FBI and Secret Service people must feel about their family members.
YEAH. What great, wholesome families they must be.
Law firms hired by the buyers, of course.
Subpoena Flannery and any of its affiliates, plus tax records of their leaders, contractors, banks, etc. Can be done by a state grand jury looking into fraudulent straw purchasers, off-shore accounts to some extent, criminal records of buyers, etc. as part of both a foreign entity illegal operation and tax evasion probe.
Here’s a simple solution.
1. Pass a a state law that no one can by land unless ownership of it is completely transparent. And back date it by 10 years.
2. Seize it and force all pertinent parties into a courtroom.
What is suspicious about barns and silos bristling with antennas like excited porcupines?
This country is under attack. The Democrats, some of whom are owned by China, do nothing about it.
Don’t you think that if the FBI is the crack outfit it claims that ownership could be discovered tomorrow? Geramendi, the California pol, is a Northern California hack and just may be covering for Biden and his Chinese friends. (Yes, I know, it makes one sick to think that there might be a Biden connection, but I’m afraid this nation is fast sinking to the last Circle.)
Are these the same "officials" who can't figure out who the baggie of coke belongs to? Better call the Keystone Kops and get a professional investigation unit on the job.
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