TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* Live, Laugh, Lars feat. Rob Smith

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Friend of the show and Financial Times journalist Rob Smith joins us to discuss Euro finance guys. Why are they so louche and strange? Why are they just sort of hanging around connecting people? Why is this entire episode a name alert? We also discuss Volocopter and Neom some more. It's an episode you don't want to miss. Get the whole episode on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/104395947 *LIVE SHOW ALERT* See us live in London on May 29th with special guest Nish Kumar! Get tickets here: https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/trashfuture-presents-liz-truss-presents-ten-years-to-save-the-west-ft-nish-kumar/   *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

To explain who Christian is, right? So he's friends with Peter Thiel. He's very close to Peter Thiel. They invest a lot together. And he runs a family office, which is just a term for when you have a pool of your own money. But he was really early in psychedelics as a therapeutic cure. Okay. Yeah. This is very Euro finance guy. He's trying to medicalise. He's trying to make medical grade, like magic mushrooms. He's very obviously into crypto, massively into crypto. And he has this penthouse in London, actually. He has the top floor of this big building. I may have been there.

And he has all these ancient relics and antiquities, like Greek statues and stuff. But he has a story for each one about how it's related to psychedelia. You know, like this is a statue of Hester or whatever. Be 100% honest, this sounds like one of the most annoying people I could ever hope to meet in my life. He's very charming! He's like the guy that Johnny Depp is working for in the Ninth Gate. That's the end. I want you to get me a book written by the devil himself."

It does seem as though, to be a European, a Eurofinance guy in this way, you have to be kind of weird enough that people remember you. But you don't really need to be good at the business of just greasing society. Yeah. I think that's the thing. You need to be interesting and memorable. But Christian, it just goes on and on. He's really tight with Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and he called Rwanda the real life Wakanda. Oh my god. You know, from Black Panther? Jesus Christ.

That should be the tourism sort of thing. be the tourism. It's on the arsenal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. An Austrian who collects ancient artifacts and will talk to you about psychedelia. Indiana Jones villain. Quote. Rwanda is the real life Wakanda. Once again, Dr. Jones. There's nothing you can possess. So Angamay is German, but I think he has some Austrian family, but he hangs

out with a lot of Austrians. But yeah, very tight with Thiel, and still an Austrian, but he can hang. Angermeyer and Peter Thiel at the moment are trying to create this thing called the Enhanced Games. Oh yeah, we talked about that. So Angermeyer's involved in that. And you know, Angeyer said, like he talks up his credentials in this kind of psychedelia as a medicine space. A guy called Angermeyer who's like more people should be on steroids.

What I particularly enjoyed was an old statement of Angermeyer's where he was meeting with a non-profit, sorry, he has a non-profit MAPS which is about this study of, you know what I'm about to say. Made after the Yeah Yeah Yeah song Yeah. Yeah. Not named after the group, the online group. Where basically is trying again, going for a laudable goal to legalize the therapeutic use of scheduled drugs. However, he says he has a plan that he funded with a quarter million dollars to, and I quote, bring Israelis and Palestinians together to take Ayahuasca.

Yes! Yes! A true and lasting peace. Fuck yeah, brother. I have a number of questions. My first one is, on knowledge and belief, Ayahuasca is not that expensive. Well, you know, I don't know. You need to get a shaman?

Yeah. Shaman's ain't cheap. Is there a shaman living? As it's become a trendy thing to do, the going rate for a shaman has gone up. For sure. For sure. Bibi Netanyahu just like, chunning and crying in the corner as the sober Qatari trip guide tries to bring him back. It would be a Katari too. Yeah. So before we move on from Angamai, one of my favorite things he tried to do, but didn't

manage to, was he launched, I think it was called the Jurassic Fund. And he basically, he tried to launch a fund to invest in dinosaur skeletons. And he basically said, these are the next hot asset class. God's not making any more of them. It's like Bitcoin. There's a limited or gold. There's a limited. People will always need dinosaurs. Yeah. You just have to mine for them. It's perfect. Yeah. If it doesn't work out, make them at a crude oil. But yeah, that, that was a bridge too far, even for like Anger Myers charm.

I didn't think he was able to get investors in on that one. Well, if you want to talk about someone who might own or sell a bridge, let's talk Benko. Yeah. Now this guy is the Austrian. Yes, he is Austrian and wears like Leiderhosen and like the Tyrol and like... So he recently, his property empire has recently gone completely bankrupt. Bankrupt. But it went bankrupt.

Bankrupt. We alluded to at the beginning that it owned a bunch of quite famous buildings. And it did so through, wouldn't you know it? Big bank. An incredibly complicated set of ownership structures, which it doesn't really, I don't think it's worth breaking down how they worked here other than just how they're designed to obscure things. I was going to say, yeah, how it actually works doesn't matter. It's just supposed to

be impenetrable. And I've used that word twice today. Well, I guess it didn't. It didn't work. No, it didn't work. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, Renny Benko has an existing criminal conviction, I think in 2013 or something like that, essentially for bribery. So he raised a bunch of money from the people we described, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, the Persia family, having already had a criminal conviction. Same deal with Lars Windhorst as well, he had that criminal conviction in 2010. So even that is not a barrier to these people raising money from people.

You think that'd be the most obvious of red flags in your due diligence check. I mean, having been banked up abroad. I mean, look, we know Americans also were... Many wealthy Americans were happy to invest with a financier who had a criminal conviction in 2008, 2009. Yeah, for various financial services, uh huh. Well, he had the smart idea of engaging in an activity which he knew a lot of rich people would engage in, you know, like show jumping.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's just like croquet, you know. You find a lot of rich people would engage in, you know, like show jumping. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's just like croquet, you know, you find a lot of rich people doing it. Yeah, exactly. So what was interesting about Benko going back to- I'm gonna make it like baseball. The other other MLP, yeah. Talk about the minor leagues. There was another couple of facts about Benko I think are worth sharing.

Which is that most of the people who were on the payroll of his property empire were like party planners, huntsmen, private jet-smen. HUNTSMAN? Hold on, back up a fucking second. It's as if you were in the Witcher universe. Like what? Well, Austria kind of is the Witcher universe. If he's fully in on the lederhosen pill, then that's like, reasonable.

Right? Because what he does is he'll like, he'll take... He wants to give you the razzle dazzle. Like that's what these guys all do. And so he's like, well... The Austrian razzle dazzle. It used to be a lot more impressive in the 19th century. Now it's just like, please meet my loyal retainers of Huntsman, like lederhosen polishes, yodelers... A bunch of FSB guys for some reason. Yeah, we've got Jan Maselach, Mozart, Hitler, Fritzl, great guys! Austrian soft power 19th century.

Do you want to hear some banging marches and see the most beautiful fat woman you've ever seen? Austrian soft power 21st century. Do you want to, some banging marches and see the most beautiful fat woman you've ever seen? Austrian soft power 21st century. Do you want to like, hunt some game? And live in a basement? Yeah. So he employs all these guys, cause he wants to again, project this like, fun aristocratic air, and you know, what's he doing with these like, huntsmen and private planes and hotels

and yachts and stuff? Yeah, what's the level of danger of this game? Well he's entertaining like Sebastian Kurtz basically. Like a lot of guys on the right of Austrian politics. Yeah, I was going to say when you mentioned Austrian politics. The right of Austrian politics? Like quiz question, do you know where Sebastian Kurtz went to work after he'd left politics? I say left. I mean, left. The Chrysler building?

No, he went to work for Teal Capital. Peter Teal's... These guys are all pals together. They're all friends. They're all friends. So he basically has all this stuff to appeal to these people, and then appeal to the people who want to trust a aristocratic type of German guy with their money. Why is it always the... I know the answer to this, but rhetorically, why is it always the right wing of politics? Why is there no like, expansive international left wing kind of graft situation? Where's my kind of, um...

You want to be taken on, like, you want to be taken hunting? I want to be wined? I want to be dined? Yeah, where are the union fat cats who are like going to offer me this? Well, we need some kind of like loose go between this. Like, yeah, I'll introduce you. A hundred percent. I want to be the loose left-wing international go between. Like if any of that jobs going like if George Soros is out there listening, like please. Benko also, as you say, has lots of help from Austria's political elite. You also is written. sorry, you also write. I should say that's my colleague Sam Jones.

Your colleague Sam Jones writes, Benko also had a personal relationship with Thomas Schmid, head of the OBAG at the time at the post-Barcasa deal. So the post-Barcasa deal is a building. Schmid was a former top civil servant at the Ministry of Finance and one of Kurtz's most important lieutenants in government. In both roles he had been involved with the plans. Two years before the lease was signed, Benko offered him a 600,000 euro annual pay package to become a general representative for Cigna, the company, according to leaked text messages explained by prosecutors.

Benko responded by insisting the offer was never serious. You're on it. It was a bit. It was a joke. I was doing the jack-off motion when I offered him the money Yeah, what are you worth 600,000 this is Scott Benton level Hotel was loud. Oh, I didn't know I couldn't do that. What do you mean? Oh, it's gonna leak the report after it was published Have you never heard of yakking off?