Impact Investment: what is it, who are they and what do they want from us?

Finance companies claiming to be for The Greater Good call themselves 'Impact investors' and are driving the WEF, UN/WHO Agenda 2030.

Lots of people say to me they really aren’t bothered about intrusive surveillance of personal info on their phones or laptop. ‘My life really isn’t that interesting’ they claim, or “I’m not doing anything wrong, so it doesn’t matter who monitors me.” But this lack of understanding misses the point. So let me explain how these views can be harmful to us all and raise awareness of some of the corporates involved. I’ll aim, in this-longer-than-usual-post, to address questions like: "What is an impact investor and how does their data-harvesting impact our lives? Can financial investment in healthcare or education always be measured in a number? What is a real investment, and what does it mean to individuals and communities?

Improving literacy skills can encourage parents to read their kids a bedtime story - isn’t that an authentic investment of time and expertise?

But first, some context: the reason why I’m writing this, is because in a

Doc Malik Honest Health

recent podcast with UK MP Andrew Bridgen, the impact investment entity Legatum was mentioned (2 min clip):

As Andrew and Ahmad discuss, the Reclaim Party, (previously a Brexit marketing company) is the pseudo-political party with celebrity Laurence Fox as front man, funded by UK multimillionaire Jeremy Hosking. Reclaim the Media Ltd - a commercial company also funded by Hosking - now owns Democracy Three, the campaign and legal activism platform. Seems like Hosking’s firm has hijacked Bridgen’s crowdfunder for his court case against Hancock (otherwise known as Midazolam Matt) Which should be no surprise considering Hosking’s team’s history, and loyalty. Reclaim have been linked to Legatum, which also funds GB News and other media.

(BTW It’s worth listening to the whole podcast too, to get insights into how deep the corruption goes between entities like Legatum and the UK Government, including pseudo-democratic workings of the Houses of Commons and Lords):

#172 - Andrew Bridgen MP

So what exactly is Legatum

…and how can it have so much influence over our democracies?

I’ve written before about the impact investor Legatum Group and how they fit in with Public Private Partnerhsips (PPPs) - which have migrated recently into PPPPs (Philanthropaths as

Margaret Anna Alice

brilliantly described them). To use a word from Andrew Bridgen’s interview, this is where it gets very ‘murky’.

I’ve also written a post with

Michael Ginsburg

about Legatum’s links with Jordan Peterson’s ARC and wider concerns of controlled opposition:

The Truth about the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC)

Created as part of a United Nations initiative in 2001, impact investing and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) / Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) investing are intrinsically connected. Both have objectives that invest in companies claiming to meet specific environmental, social, or governance requirements. Impact investors view ESG factors as using funds to produce specific social impacts. And it’s that word ‘produce’ that is the crux of the issue: how are these outcomes interpreted, defined, measured?

Well that’s the beauty of that modelling, baby!

There are deliberate ambiguities in the commercial and charitable activities of these entities, which makes things challenging for researchers like me, who rely on [Freedom of] Official Information Act (OIA) requests for data that is often omitted from legacy media articles. When Gov funding is connected to any PPPs, often the request is rejected citing ‘commercial sensitivity’. For examples of this problem, see my previous article about NZ prisons and PPPs. And similarly, one of my most-read articles - about a NZ PPP which managed to obtain exemptions from the ‘vaccine’ mandates for its ‘staff’. Yet everyday nurses and doctors were forced to take the jab, or leave. It’s amazing what taxpayers’ funds can pay for and how attractive it is to the predator class. Our hard-earned cash are seen as Rivers of Gold.

The crux of the successful international PPP[P] model in terms of return on investment relies upon Government’s neglect of the public sector infrastructure alongside escalating societal problems, like poverty and ill-health. The deliberate destruction and then (part)sale of our assets for long term loan payments is in part driven by the conflicts of interest of those in positions of power (like Hancock and Hosking).

This is my (work-in-progress) diagram showing the 20+ years of endless cycles of problem/solution for the PPPPs to profit from:

Take any element of our public sector infrastructure - schools, childcare, housing, hospitals, roads or prisons…. and you can easily find an example of how the PPPP model has infiltrated and exploited taxpayers’ funds, often with limited scope for independent auditing, accountability or penalty for overspend or poor quality outcomes. It’s been happening for years and in many countries, including here in NZ.

And now 20 years after Blair’s initial promotion of PPPs, here we are - at the mercy of these ‘investors’, globally as I explained here:

And the WEF’s SDGs only exacerbated the situation, because as I explain below, these investors try to claim legitimacy by adopting a fake green 'we care for our planet’ mission statement. Only a superficial look at impact investors and their partners provides evidence that these entities do NOT care about our environment or the people within it.

screenshot from the WEF website on SDGs

Who are these investors?

Legatum describe themselves as a ‘partnership of partnerships’. This business is insidious and incenstuous. So let’s look at the largest impact investors: according to Investopedia the top five impact investing firms on the basis of assets under management (AUM) are Vital Capital, Triodos Investment Management, the Reinvestment Fund, BlueOrchard Finance S.A., and the Community Reinvestment Fund, USA. All of these firms, including Legatum’s tentacles are interconnected in complex ways as I show below.

The first one, Vital Capital has all the usual financial partners, including of course the WEF. It focuses in African infrastructure projects like roads and hospitals. Vital were a founding member of the Global Impact Investors Network - how convenient.

Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) have long served as a major source of capital for African private equity, helping to fuel infrastructure finance and ESG-aligned investing on the continent. Now, Africa needs a more diverse financial ecosystem. Local institutional investors – such as pension funds and insurance companies – may be part of the answer, but luring them requires bridging the disconnect between risk perception and reality. A uniquely African playbook is required for success. This playbook hinges on the distinct approach to greenfield opportunities, controlling stakes, and investment exits…

Writes Vital Capital’s Nimrod Gerber (my emphasis).

Collecting data from vehicle movements and ‘vaccine’ injections will inevitably form a part of the impact investor’s reporting on ‘successes’ of these projects.

The second one, Tridos is part of a Netherlands-based bank. I’m always curious to see what kinds of fingers in New Zealand’s pies these entities have, and in this case, we can see one of our largest corporate Kiwi names, Fisher & Paykel. Perhaps it won’t be any surprise in this post-covid era, to see this fund is focused on healthcare ‘devices’ (code for BigTech’s Internet of Things - ie transhumanist interventions) connected with respiratory diseases (note the SDG stamp of approval):

The third largest impact investor is the Reinvestment Fund which is a US-based firm focused on ‘anti-racism’ strategies. Many of their current data seems to be based on real estate analysis and loans for housing projects in some of the States poorest areas. Most notably, Fentanyl-ravaged Philadelphia (50 secs):

for instance this report regarding mortgage rates in the city:

Screenshot from Reinvestment Fund’s website

Bearing in mind the long-running drug and crime problem in this area, it’s difficult to see any evidence of how impact investment may have helped individuals living in Philadelphia over the years. Or maybe the reverse is true?

The fourth largest impact investors is Blue Orchard. Part of finance giant the Schroders Group. You’ll see a common theme of all these impact investment websites, showing arbitrary numbers which often have little underlying explanation or validity and that apparently provide evidence of that entity’s ‘impact’:

Let’s be honest, it’s impossible to quantitatively ‘measure’ any social change that could be the consequence of impact investors’ funds. From my educationalist’s perspective, an investment in training like basic literacy may not provide that individual with a well-paid job for many years to come, if ever. But it could, of course, allow that parent to read a bedtime story with their child. Is that ‘measurable’ to an impact investor? More importantly, should anyone attempt to ‘put a number on that’ (for someone else to profit from)?

Of course, some can argue that specific investments are highly effective. In turn, this narrative can help encourage companies that don't usually receive that type of investment to change to ‘fit’ the required ESG framework. However, some companies argue ‘impacts’ are complex and include some disadvantages, for instance, exploitation of funds and/or increased division in societies. And so the cycle continues, with increased division where ESGs are promoted.

I’ve spent time researching the financial partnerships and the world of regulatory capture of the impact investor Legatum, and have created a diagram that summarises it so far (wink to Topher). You can see below the massive extent of the investments in the strategic areas of health, tech, education and media worldwide.

Have no doubt, these people are not our friends:

If you’re new to my Substack and interested in learning more about the research I’ve already done into each of these tentacles of Legatum here is a summary. More in-depth pieces include a post about the Freedom Fund (top right of diagram), which aims to end modern slavery; the End Fund (below it on the diagram) which aims to end common diseases in Africa and exploit individuals in the process, and the Luminos Fund (centre, top) which is aimed at improving education is undeveloped countries. Unethical data harvesting from exploited individuals inevitably plays a significant role in all these areas. (For more detailed info on this, see this website.)

To give you an idea of the size of the ‘partnerships’ Legatum’s End Fund alone, in the last 10 years, has been the beneficiary of nearly US$90million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As you can see from my diagram above, other tentacles of Legatum (bottom centre, and to the left) are more explicitly academia, Legatum Inst (eg MIT and Stanford Uni etc), Legatum Capital and the Prosperity Index (eg finance and rankings of investment risks), media (GB News/UnHerd etc) and politics and law (Democracy Three, Reclaim Media etc).

WEF/WHO SDG and ESGs and its partner-in-crime impact investors are relatively new to the financial landscape and so interest is understandably high from those seeking ‘emerging markets’. But even as early as 2021, research showed how, ESG funds have insignificant returns compared to similar products. In 2023 increases in interest rates were blamed for ongoing problems with poor returns. So maybe the artificial promotion of these arbitrary and ambiguous ‘scalable measurables’ have already reached the end of the road? It could be interesting to see this situation play out between savvy wealthy investors, politicians, financial advisors, PR spin and captured academics. A sceptic may consider how the covid-era-induced-global-recession was very convenient for some of these investment opportunities?

The ‘sale’ of any impact investing firm seems entirely based on contrived ‘problems’ addressed by virtue signalling with magical numbers like these from Legatum’s End Fund (thank God for that horse de-wormer):

Were these SDGs and ESGs dreamed-up for the impact investors which saw a need to plug a gap for those charitable entrepreneurs seeking new ways to ‘give something back’ (to what, exactly?). Whilst they aim to earn a financial return, their clients also want to address a social need, like providing cost-effective housing solutions or agricultural equipment. Investing with these types of strategies may provide longer-term returns, but evidence of that is a long way off.

How can we stop it?

I’ve described here how impact investors control vast swathes of our assets, our data and the media that controls the narrative. In the UK, it is evident that Legatum heavily influences our Government and policy through financial conflicts of interest and think tanks like Legatum’s Institute.

If we want to promote a world that is based on convenient virtual-world modelling, and grow the impact investor’s fake philanthropaths virtue-signalling, then continue to comply: data harvesting from using Google, obsessing with your FitBit or zapping your supermarket ‘membership’ card, are just three of the millions of ways that will end in our digital prison envisaged by the WEFs SDGs.

So don’t do it!

Be the change we want to see. Reduce your own and your families’ screen time and spend more quality hours outside, enjoying nature and reconnecting with our shared, precious humanity. I don’t need to advise you how to do this, you already know. Follow your heart. And

Abir Ballan, MPH

&

Ruth Gaskovski

&

Margaret Anna Alice

all have bloody amazing techniques to try out too. Let’s ‘invest’ in ourselves to see the ‘impact’ with our own eyes. Let the wealthy predator class devour themselves.