It’s easy to identify some of the SpaceX investors on Kahlon’s books: Indian politician Abhishek Singhvi; Betsy DeVos, former US Secretary of Education; A British Virgin Islands company owned by Indonesian billionaires. But there are other shell companies on the list whose ultimate owners are hidden.
One such company is a Delaware LLC called HAL9001 Partners Fund I, which invested about $10 million in SpaceX funds in 2020. HAL9001’s incorporation documents were signed by venture capitalist Roman Sobachevsky. The Treasury Department recently fined a company co-owned by Sobachevsky millions of dollars for managing a separate investment on behalf of a sanctioned Russian oligarch. Sobachevsky has not been personally accused of wrongdoing.
A spokesperson for Tomales Bay Capital said the oligarch “had no involvement in the investment.” Sobachevsky did not answer questions about who financed the SpaceX investment.
The records also shed some light on the relationship between SpaceX and Qatar. The documents show that funds affiliated with Bracket Capital – an investment firm with offices in Los Angeles, London and Qatar – invested about $48 million through a series of deals from 2017 to 2020. According to an email sent by Kahlon to SpaceX’s CFO, Brackett has money from the Qatari royal family. The ledger also lists Doha, Qatar as the address of a mysterious entity called AM FIG Cayman Ltd., which invested approximately $10 million in 2020.
The documents do not specify whether the bracket investment was made on behalf of the royal family or any other client. In 2021, when Kahlon was urging supporters to push for another SpaceX deal, he messaged a Brackett employee: “Finally we can send Yalda to talk to the big guy. We need a bail out.” (Yalda Auker is a co-founder of the bracket. It’s unclear whether “big guy” refers to a member of the royal family and what Kahlon means by “collateral.”)
Brackett did not respond to requests for comment.
The investment included on SpaceX’s books was a small percentage, but it may have yielded a windfall. The company’s valuation has risen rapidly in recent years, rising from $33.3 billion in 2019 to $2.7 trillion as of Wednesday morning.
Last year, ProPublica reported on SpaceX’s unusual approach to accepting money from Chinese investors. According to testimony in the Delaware case, the company allowed Chinese investors to buy stakes in SpaceX as long as the money was routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore secrecy centers.
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