🠈 Salida Capital? 🠊
Note, I came across the name Salida Capital in an article about influence peddling. I could not find good information on what Salida Capital was or who owned it.
Salida Capital
Peter Schweizer mentioned the Toronto based private equity firm Salida Capital in the book Clinton Cash. This partisan work examines the role that big finance plays in big politics.
Schweizer claims that a Russian based private equity firm named Renaissance Capital gave Bill Clinton a $500,000 speaking fee. Renaissance was later involved in RosAtom's purchase of UraniumOne. Schweizer noticed that RosAtom listed Salida Capital as a subsidiary. This listing seems strange as the firm appears to list other owners.
Schweizer claimed that Salida gave about $2.6 million in donations and speaking fees to the Clintons.
The interplay of big finance and big government is an important issue. So, I decided to do some online research about Salida. Salida's web site is dark and I could not find much info on its investments.
Salida Capital was founded in 2001. The primary investor was Bill Gallacher who was president of Avenir Capital Corporation and on the board of Athabasca Oil Sands Corporation, Maxim Power Corp., Mahalo Energy Ltd., and Black Diamond Group Inc..
In 2009, Salida paid $1.68USD million so that its CEO, Courtenay Wolfe, could have a lunch with Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway. Biographies of Ms Wolfe say that Salida had over a billion dollars under investment. (I could not find any information about these investments).
Courtenay Wolfe became the CEO of FBSciences.4 FBSciences partnered with the Clinton Development Initiative3 on a crop development project in Africa. This project appears to have been profitable.
Some of Salida's other investments went bad and they closed their growth fund in 2013. They closed their web site in 2014.
My Conclusion
The $1.68 million dollar lunch with Buffet indicates that the company was involved in influence peddling. Salida was clearly involved in mining activity; However, the donation to the Clinton Foundation appears to have been part FBScience's efforts to sell products in Africa.
I found a PDF in which RosAtom listed Salida as a subsidiary; however, I think the report misrepresented the relation between RosAtom and Salida. It was probably a partnership relation and not a subsidiary relation.
References:
- Newswire Ca - Salida Launched Private Equity Fund (Drawn 1/6/2020)
- City Journal - Kickback Kids (Drawn 1/6/2020)
- FBSciences - Clinton Foundation and African Crop Production (Drawn 1/6/2020)
- FB Sciences - Courtenay Wolfe (Drawn 1/6/2020)