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Celerity

(42,666 posts)
Sun May 23, 2021, 09:27 PM May 2021

This Belarusian Currency Trader Is Buying Up Tiny Vermont

And he’s looking to build a luxury ‘Viking village’ in one particularly teensy town.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/belarusian-currency-trader-paul-belogour-is-buying-up-tiny-vermont



A Belarusian currency speculator named Pavel Boguslavovich Belogour is buying up huge swaths of tiny Vermont—thousands of acres of the Green Mountain State, and even patches of land over the border in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. At first, Belogour, who goes by “Paul,” was received as something of a novelty. An idiosyncratic character with long hair and scant online footprint, he had amassed a small fortune in the largely unregulated world of foreign exchange trading—and then came to Vermont to spend it in eccentric ways. He bought a maple sugar farm, an entire marina, and a plot of undeveloped wood, where he planned to build, among other things, a Viking-themed “luxury hideaway,” which he describes as “the Disney of the North.” “His choices of what to invest in are certainly eclectic, I would say,” Brattleboro Selectboard member Tim Wessel told The Daily Beast. “Clearly he likes the water, so he bought a marina. And clearly he likes beer, so he bought a brewery. It’s kind of like, well, if I had that kind of money, maybe I’d be doing the same thing.”

But a few months before the pandemic, Belogour’s shopping spree accelerated. The 50-year-old multimillionaire, whose exact net worth is unknown, joined the crowd of billionaires and oligarchs looking to buy up rural property, and began closing real estate deals at a rapid clip. In the past two years alone, the foreign exchange trader has snagged more than 3,100 acres across three Vermont counties, including 10 buildings, lots, and businesses, at a cost of more than $3 million. “Vermont only has 635,000 people,” said Dan Normandeau, a realtor who worked with Belogour on three different properties. “Brattleboro itself has somewhere around 12,000 people. So no, we don’t see that. I shouldn’t say it never happens, but it’s certainly caught people’s attention.” The rapid consolidation of land became a cause for some concern: “You hear things like, ‘Oh my God, that guy from Gilford is buying all this property,’” said Jeff Potter, publisher of the local nonprofit newsroom, The Commons.

Facebook groups for local Vermonters filled with speculation about his acquisitions, history, and motives. Many were supportive; more than a few skewed xenophobic. One Brattleboro resident, who asked not to be named, said locals had coined an inaccurate nickname, “the Russian,” even though Belogour hails from Belarus. He’d hear, “The Russian bought this, the Russian bought that,” he said, “the Russian bought the outlet center on the highway, the Russian bought the mattress store.” Mounting curiosity about Belogour’s properties reached fever pitch earlier this month, when four local news outlets—several of which had reported on Belogour himself—announced that he had bought them all. In total, he acquired two local newspapers, The Brattleboro Reformer and The Bennington Banner; a weekly called The Manchester Journal; and the bi-monthly UpCountry Magazine. On Friday, the currency trader with no prior news experience was named president and publisher of all four.

The announcement spurred a new round of worrying. One blogger wondered whether Belogour shared the Belarusian government’s attitudes toward media censorship. But other concerns were more justified—in 2015, the same papers had sold to a subsidiary of Alden Capital, the hedge fund dubbed “one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism,” which had gradually trimmed their budgets, in one case, leaving just a single reporter to cover an entire county. In Bernie Sanders’ home state, Wessel said, many residents are skeptical of the influence of outside capital, particularly from the finance industry. “There’s a lot of progressive thinking here,” he noted, “a lot of anti-capitalist thinking.” Belogour first encountered Vermont in 2008, when he and his wife bought a farm just south of the state border in the town of Bernardston. Though the land is technically in Massachusetts, Belogour frequently crossed the border into Brattleboro. “If you want to go get groceries,” he told The Daily Beast, “it’s closer to me than anything else in Massachusetts.”

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This Belarusian Currency Trader Is Buying Up Tiny Vermont (Original Post) Celerity May 2021 OP
Sounds like he's assimilating well. marble falls May 2021 #1
His middle name sounds like hack writer's creation for a straight to Netflix B-movie. BOGUSLAVOVICH Celerity May 2021 #2
He looks like a character from European movie. marble falls May 2021 #4
Central Maine is ripe for the taking..... OAITW r.2.0 May 2021 #3
No. Florida! marble falls May 2021 #5
The last fucking thing I want..... OAITW r.2.0 May 2021 #6
I'm with you! Give 'm Florida - buy Mar-a-Lago, maybe. marble falls May 2021 #7
+1 2naSalit May 2021 #12
I find this a bit disturbing. smirkymonkey May 2021 #8
It's happening in my area... 2naSalit May 2021 #13
I agree competely. It's happening in small ways everywhere. smirkymonkey May 2021 #15
I also think it's one of the reasons many of us can't... 2naSalit May 2021 #17
I get a really sinking feeling in my stomach about this, like what could possibly go wrong? Hekate May 2021 #9
+1 2naSalit May 2021 #14
+1000 smirkymonkey May 2021 #16
Is he going to be the big bad guy in the next John Wick movie? Yavin4 May 2021 #10
Wasn't the Vermont Yankee Nuclear power plant in that area? 70sEraVet May 2021 #11
Laundering money for Belarus' dictator Alexander Lukashenko? dalton99a May 2021 #18
It 's Rubio in FL that's been selling off parts in FL to Russians rockfordfile May 2021 #19

OAITW r.2.0

(23,862 posts)
3. Central Maine is ripe for the taking.....
Sun May 23, 2021, 09:52 PM
May 2021

But I prefer the investments made by Roxanne Quimby (Bert's Bees) and buying up huge tracts of the Great North Woods - with no commercial development plans.

OAITW r.2.0

(23,862 posts)
6. The last fucking thing I want.....
Sun May 23, 2021, 10:06 PM
May 2021

is for Maine to become the "Florida of the North". I'd rather get the State traded to Canada.

 

smirkymonkey

(63,221 posts)
8. I find this a bit disturbing.
Sun May 23, 2021, 10:13 PM
May 2021

What if he's just the front man for other interests? And that fact that he bought up four local news outlets is concerning as well. Give 'em an inch...

What if this starts to become a trend? I would watch him very closely and others who start to follow his lead.

2naSalit

(86,061 posts)
13. It's happening in my area...
Mon May 24, 2021, 12:45 AM
May 2021

Been going on for several years. Chinese wealthy have been buying up everything around several national parks. I think there should be a tight limit on the amount of real estate noncitizens can own.

 

smirkymonkey

(63,221 posts)
15. I agree competely. It's happening in small ways everywhere.
Mon May 24, 2021, 02:05 AM
May 2021

Tons of expensive real estate in the larger cities are owned by foreigners from nations that are not friendly toward us and either leave the places vacant or have their children live there while they are attending university.

Unfortunately, there are too many Americans who value making a quick buck over the security of their country, so they don't care who they sell to, as long as they have the cash. Where is your area anyway?

I wonder if anyone has written a book on this yet. It has been going on for years, so you think someone might have figured out it would be a subject that many would be interested in.

2naSalit

(86,061 posts)
17. I also think it's one of the reasons many of us can't...
Mon May 24, 2021, 08:39 AM
May 2021

Afford to buy property with all that money coming from outside our own economy.

Hekate

(90,202 posts)
9. I get a really sinking feeling in my stomach about this, like what could possibly go wrong?
Sun May 23, 2021, 10:17 PM
May 2021

Sometimes our country can be really, really blind.

70sEraVet

(3,430 posts)
11. Wasn't the Vermont Yankee Nuclear power plant in that area?
Sun May 23, 2021, 10:51 PM
May 2021

I believe the plant shut down in 2014, but apparently it takes a LONG time for the decommissioning process.
"During 2015, all of the fuel in VY’s reactor will be transferred to the plant’s spent fuel pool for initial cooling. The fuel in the pool will eventually be moved to dry casks that will be housed on two storage pads at the site.

Dry casks are comprised of sealed steel inner containers that fully enclose the spent fuel, and a steel and concrete outer shell that provides strength and radiation shielding. Residual heat in the loaded casks—weighing almost 200 tons—is dissipated by natural air circulation without the need for fans or pumps. The company expects to complete the transfer to dry casks by 2021."
https://www.powermag.com

A lot going on in that tiny area of the country.

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