USAF investigates mysterious company that bought 55,000 acres around California’s major air force base

Government officials are investigating a mysterious company that has bought about 55,000 acres of dry farmland around a USAF base in California.

Travis Air Force Base, northeast of San Francisco, is home to large transport aircraft used for refueling smaller aircraft and shipping aid and ammunition around the world.

As of 2018, a company called Flannery Associates LLC has spent about $800 million buying tracts of land around the base, leaving local, state and federal officials stunned as to who they are and what they want to do with it.

That’s what a lawyer representing Flannery told me The Wall Street Journal the company is controlled by US citizens and that 97 percent of its capital comes from US investors – with the remaining investments coming from British and Irish citizens.

Travis Air Force Base (pictured) houses large transport aircraft used for refueling smaller aircraft and shipping aid and ammunition overseas

A letter to Solano County, most of which Flannery owns, describes the company as “owned by a group of families looking to diversify their portfolio from stocks to real assets, including farmland in the western United States.” said the provincial newspaper the Republic of the Day.

But after eight months of investigation, the Air Force’s Foreign Investment Risk Review Office has failed to identify a single person behind the Flannery, according to the Journal.

Meanwhile, the United States Department of Agriculture launched its own investigation, also to no avail.

“Nobody can figure out who they are,” Ronald Kott, mayor of nearby Rio Vista, now largely surrounded by Flannery land, told The Journal. “Whatever they do — this looks like a long-term stretch.”

Over the years that Flannery, registered in Delaware, has bought up land, it has issued a variety of accounts and indications of what it wants to do with it.

An attorney for Flannery, Richard Melnyk, said in an email to the county in 2019 that it was considering partnering with local farmers to grow “new types of crops or orchards,” according to The Journal.

Mitch Mashburn, who works for the county, questioned the feasibility of using the land for agricultural purposes.

A lawyer for the mysterious Delaware-registered Flannery Associated said investors were 97 percent American, though those claims have not been verified

Many of the aircraft housed at Travis Air Force base are large military transport aircraft such as C-5s and C-17s. Pictured is a Sgt. looking over the open plane ramp of a 62nd Airlift Wing C-17

“Most of the land they buy is dry farmland,” he told the paper. “I don’t see where that country can make a profit to make it worth nearly a billion dollars in investment.”

In a separate email also seen by the Journal, Melnyk said Flannery was considering renting out “a significant portion” of his land to olive growers, including some at the base.

According to online company records, a person named Thomas Mather was listed as once a director or officer of the company, although there is almost no other publicly available information about him.

He is also listed as the manager of another Delaware registered company called Diversified Land LLC, with the same California address in Folsom.

And it’s not just local officials who are confused.

“We don’t know who Flannery is, and their sizeable purchases don’t make sense to anyone in the area,” Democratic Rep. John Garamendi, who sits on the preparedness panel of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Wall Street Journal.

“The fact that they’re purposefully buying land up to the fence at Travis raises important questions.”

The mystery surrounding Flannery is reminiscent of last year’s much smaller purchase of 300 acres of farmland in North Dakota, just minutes from another air force base.

The land that the Fufeng Group bought is 20 minutes, about 26 miles, from Grand Forks Air Force Base

The mystery surrounding Travis is reminiscent of last year’s much smaller purchase of 300 acres of farmland in North Dakota by a Chinese company

China-based food producer Fufeng Group planned to build a corn plant on its new land in Grand Forks, just 20 minutes from Grand Forks Air Force Base, which houses some of the country’s most sensitive drone technology.

The purchase drew suspicion from military officers, national security experts and lawmakers alike.

A 2019 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that China owned at least 192,000 acres of farmland in the U.S. worth more than $1.9 billion.

For example, while Canada owns much more U.S. farmland, a 2018 USDA report showed that China’s farmholdings in the U.S. and other provinces have increased tenfold since 2009.