A mysterious company is suing local farming families for reportedly conspiring to sell it land at inflated prices, leading some to speculate that it may be linked to a Chinese group.
Flannery Associates, an unknown entity, has invested more than $800 million in around 55,000 acres of land surrounding the Travis Air Force base since 2018. The company is now suing local farming families for $510 million, claiming that they were acting in disregard of federal and state laws by conspiring to raise land values.
Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., is skeptical of this lawsuit and believes it could be part of a scheme to bankrupt the farmers. The Democratic Congressman also believes that the group may be linked to China because of the significant amount of money involved and the proximity of the farmlands to the air force base.
Flannery’s initial complaint states that it has “smoking gun” evidence of the scheme – emails and text messages from the farms. Notably, Thomas McCormack, a director of the Bank of Rio Vista, was among the targets of the lawsuit. His family’s 2,500 acre farm was sold to Flannery for $20,876,500 or about $8,400 an acre. Garamendi thinks the families didn’t want to sell in the first place and claims that there was nothing obligating the company to pay what it did.
“It’s a suit designed to force the farmers to lawyer up, spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyering and maybe at the end of the day, bankrupt themselves,” Garamendi said. “In fact, that has happened to at least one family that I know of and I’ve heard rumors that another family simply said we can’t afford the lawyers.”
The Air Force’s ‘Foreign Investment Risk Review Office’ has been investigating the group since the initial investment was made, but hasn’t been able to identify any members of the group. A lawyer claiming to represent Flannery insists that the group is controlled by US citizens, 97% of its capital comes from American investors, and the remaining 3% coming from British and Irish citizens.
However, an eight-month federal investigation was unable to make heads or tails in discovering who is behind the company.
What Flannery plans to do with the land remains shrouded in near complete mystery. In a letter to Solano County, the majority of which is owned by Flannery, the company merely described itself as “owned by a group of families looking to diversify their portfolio from equities into real assets, including agricultural land in the western United States.”
On the other hand, Mitch Mashburn, who works for the county, cast doubt on the farmland’s ability to “turn a profit” given the dry land acquisition. Another of Fannery’s emails alluded to possibly leasing a portion of the land to olive growers.
Rep. Garamendi concludes that the situation is definitely worthy of concern due to the base’s “essential” status within our air operations. The US Department of Agriculture has already inquired into who is behind Flannery, but have yet to reach a conclusion. As Mayor Ronald Kott of nearby Rio Vista succinctly puts it: “Nobody can figure out who they are. Whatever they’re doing – this looks like a very long-term play.”
