Someone bought 52,000 acres in the Bay Area. No one knows who they are | Hacker News Reader

Someone bought 52,000 acres in the Bay Area. No one knows who they are

sfgate.com

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is reviewing the purchases of land by Flannery Associates, a limited liability company registered in Delaware whose owners are publicly unknown.1

The company, who paid about $800 million for land purchased since 2018, is accusing a group of California landowners of conspiring to inflate the price of their land by hundreds of millions of dollars.2

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that government officials remained unaware of the owners’ identities.3

An investigation by the U.S. Air Force is ongoing.

1 https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/someone-bought-52000-...

2 https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/some-california-lan...

3 https://www.wsj.com/articles/investors-bought-nearly-1-billi...

Is not this why US invented shell companies ?

It's feature not bug ?

I find it hard to believe we 'invented' shell corporations, even if they weren't called that. Esp considering how many jurisdictions catering to shell corporations and their ilk are British aligned.

The history of corporations are available from many different sources, from many perspectives, a lot of it accessible for free online.

If you find it hard to believe, you can look into it and draw your own conclusions.

I'm somewhat aware of how corporation work. I was poking a bit of fun at someone thought the US exclusively came up with the concept of a shell corp. Clearly, I didn't take into account there would be a condescending and tone deaf user who didn't have a more constructive or insightful response than "duh, just google it, newb".

If your only somewhat aware, then it shouldn't be that hard to believe there may be something your missing in regards to the history of corporations?

Why wouldn't the Air Force be secretly buying it to expand their base if secrecy gets them a better price?

When the federal govt wants something it pays what it considers a fair price. There isn’t a lot of negotiating, and it wouldn’t buy through an LLC.

Sounds like a group of investors are making a bet the Air Force will want to expand in the build up to conflict with China

Expanding Air Force bases on the West Coast nets us little in a conflict with China.

Building bigger bases in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and similar adjacent countries is a much better way to posture ourselves for any future scuffles with China.

The buyers bought way about market price for some properties.

>A lawyer who represents the Flannery group told the Journal that 97% of the investors are American, with British and Irish investors making up the other 3%, but that information has not been independently verified

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36816387

Probably something boring like a new theme park but its fun to come up with more elaborate conspiracy thinking.

It’s likely, but they would have of be idiots to think that buying up massive tracts of land saddled up to an active Air Force base would not raise alarms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com