Blog

Director, from March 2016

Harrison Wellford was elected onto the board of ALEVO GROUP SA in March 2016. In May 2016 alevo.com described him as:

Among the world’s most respected advisors in the sectors of both energy and presidential transitions, Harrison Wellford plays a hands-on role at Alevo in governance and finance (the highlight is ours). The Chairman of the Wellford Energy Group has spent more than 25 years advancing alternative energy deployment, including board and investor positions with numerous organizations including the Intercontinental Energy Corporation, General Nutrition, Summit Power Group, and Sithe Energies Inc. Additionally, he served as Chairman of the Latham & Watkins energy and international practice groups and guided the firm’s expansion abroad.

It was Harrison Wellford’s cousin, Charlottean Wellford Tabor, who arranged the financing for the $68 million Philip Morris facility through a company called Bootsmead LLC.

Harrison Wellford also appears to have done quite well out of that deal, pocketing a cool $3,000,000 consulting fee in 2014, no doubt signed off by Jostein Eikeland, and we don’t know on what basis it was calculated (except to Swiss Francs at the time it was 3,425,000). To date we haven’t been able to determine what real value Alevo received in return, and we’re very open to any comments on this. Was it in helping to raise funding for Alevo (it had never even raised close to the $1bn it encouraged the media to believe by the time it had its October 28, 2014 inauguration event)?

The 2014 Consolidated Accounts for Alevo Group SA show a total of CHF 13,131,508 of “Commissions and Professional Fees”, which later dropped to CHF 6,291,061 in 2015. This payment could well have been concealed there in 2014 and as Mr Wellford was not a director at the time it would not have required any related party disclosures (which management didn’t always respect much in declaring anyway).

Starting in March 2016 Mr Wellford received Board Member fees of $10,000 per month. It also appears that in March 2014 Mr Wellford made a $200,000 loan to Alevo to cover a payment. This was repaid in 2016 with an interest rate of 5% which seems a lot more reasonable than the 13.5% 30 year rate that Alevo (negotiated?) for the lease for its Cabarrus facility.