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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis Belarusian Currency Trader Is Buying Up Tiny Vermont
And hes 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 Vermontthousands 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 tradingand 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. Its kind of like, well, if I had that kind of money, maybe Id be doing the same thing.
But a few months before the pandemic, Belogours 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 dont see that. I shouldnt say it never happens, but its certainly caught peoples 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. Hed 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 Belogours properties reached fever pitch earlier this month, when four local news outletsseveral of which had reported on Belogour himselfannounced 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 governments attitudes toward media censorship. But other concerns were more justifiedin 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. Theres 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, its closer to me than anything else in Massachusetts.
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marble falls
(56,359 posts)Celerity
(42,666 posts)marble falls
(56,359 posts)OAITW r.2.0
(23,862 posts)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.
marble falls
(56,359 posts)OAITW r.2.0
(23,862 posts)is for Maine to become the "Florida of the North". I'd rather get the State traded to Canada.
marble falls
(56,359 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)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)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)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)Afford to buy property with all that money coming from outside our own economy.
Hekate
(90,202 posts)Sometimes our country can be really, really blind.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Same here. I don't know why, but my instincts are telling me this is not a good thing.
Yavin4
(35,357 posts)John Wick shoots up Vermont.
70sEraVet
(3,430 posts)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 VYs reactor will be transferred to the plants 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 casksweighing almost 200 tonsis 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.