ETG Commodities
Since 2016, 19 of the Sask Party’s top 20 donations by amount occurred during the election years of 2016 and 2020. A good chunk of it came from the legal and accounting firms that are supposed to keep our province on an honest and transparent path.
I’m going to say it again: this full-blown attempt to undercut democracy by some of the most powerful lawyers in the province is an insult to every Saskatchewan voter and these firms should be ashamed.
But we’re not here to talk about those fine folks today. Instead we’re going to chat about the donor at the very top of the above screenshot, ETG Commodities.
ETG Commodities was originally established in the 1960s in Kenya as a farmgate company to market and trade commodities from Africa. It grew exponentially and in the mid-2000s expanded to other global regions including India and eventually Mississauga, Ontario, where it established its Canadian headquarters.
In 2014 ETG expanded into Western Canada by purchasing Swift Current’s TW Commodities, which processes peas, lentils, chickpeas and other speciality crops at a facility in Swift Current and another in Success, Saskatchewan, owned and operated since 1983 by the Dunnington family. At the time ETG CEO Guarav (Rav) Kapoor said management of TW Commodities would remain the same and TW would become a “division” of ETG.
What really happened in 2014 is ETG Commodities acquired TW Commodities as well as two of the Dunnington family’s holding companies: Dunnington Holdings Inc. and Dadco Holdings. Dadco was folded into Dunnington, which then became the sole owner of TW Commodities.
In other words, ETG Commodities owns Dunnington Holdings Inc which owns TW Commodities.
Why didn’t ETG Commodities just buy TW Commodities and leave the Dunningtons their family holding companies?
If ETG needed a Saskatchewan holding company, why would it want the Dunnington family’s instead of just incorporating a numbered holding company like everyone else?
Good questions.
The three directors listed on Dunnington Holding’s Saskatchewan corporate registry documents are ETG Commodities CEO Guirav Kapoor as well as Mahesh and Ketan Patel, brothers who own 60% and 50% stakes respectively in ETC Agro Processing (India) Private Limited and ETG Agro Private Limited. Both ETC Agro Processing and ETG Agro Private are subsidiaries of the ETG Group in India.
In 2017 a leaked report from India’s Ministry of Finance named Mahesh and Ketan Patel and accused ETG Commodities and a few other multinationals, including Viterra, of forming a cartel to manipulate the price of lentils, importing and selling them on the Indian market at higher prices in 2015 and 2016 when India faced an acute shortage.
“Investigations by the Income Tax department indicate that the sudden spike in the prices of particular pulses in 2015 was a consequence of the formation of international and Indian cartels of traders. These allegations are denied by the players concerned. Reports prepared by tax officials that are being disclosed for the first time, indicate how the pulses trade in the country has been prone to manipulation. The officials also allege there was money laundering in dal trading.”
“When the Nation Could Not Feel the Pulse”, Economic and Political Weekly, India, June 2017
Cool cool cool.
In March of 2019 India’s antitrust watchdog, the Competition Commission of India received approval from Indian courts to raid ETG’s offices in Mumbai as part of the government’s investigation into collusion on the price of pulses.
In September of 2019 Greg Yuel and Kenya-based WE Charity’sCraig Kielburger held a meeting in Moe’s office at the Legislature, as is totally normal.
On October 22, 2019, Saskatchewan’s Farm Land Security Board granted Dunnington Holdings, aka ETG Commodities complete freedom as a foreign entity to buy whatever real estate it wants in Saskatchewan for its operations.
Shortly thereafter, in November of 2019 a Canadian court granted approval for the sale of bankrupt BC-based ILTA’s processing plants, two at North Battleford and one each at Swift Current and Cut Knife to Kenya’s ETG Commodities. All land titles for these facilities are held in the name Dunnington Holdings.
In late November 2019, Jeremy Harrison bounced off on his very first trip to India, where allegedly an audience of 350 had the outstanding privilege of witnessing our little Jake have “a fireside chat on trade and investment with former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.” He also met with two cabinet ministers from Narendra Modi’s then-newly reelected government.
In December 2019, Scott Moe and his wife Krista travelled to Africa. Totally on their own dime, he insisted.
“Moe left for Kenya’s Maasai Mara region on Boxing Day and returned to Saskatchewan on Jan. 5. During that time, he met with WE founder Craig Kielburger and helped build a college dormitory… The trip was his wife’s idea… The trip involved “quite hard work,” according to Moe, who had to place solid cinder blocks while helping to build the dormitory.” - Regina Leader Post, January 13, 2020
I can’t even read that without laughing.
You “placed” solid cinder blocks, Scoots?
At most, there’s two days worth of pictures in Moe’s Facebook post about his “personal” trip to Kenya, where he would have had at least six, probably seven nights. When the WE scandal involving Trudeau broke a few months later and it was revealed that like Trudeau, Moe’s government had awarded WE that lucrative sole-sourced contract, Moe doubled down.
“The Saskatchewan Party said Moe and his wife did go on the December 2019 WE Charity trip to Kenya, but that they went at their own expense and were not paid for their participation.” - cbc.ca, July 14, 2020
Do I believe for a single hot minute that Scott Moe spent six or seven nights in a tent on the ground in Kenya building schools, or really, that his and his wife’s trip was in any way not funded by political donors?
I’ll give you three guesses… but you should only need one.
Oh and by the way, nowhere in Scott Moe’s 2019 or 2020 Conflict of Interest statements - nowhere on the six pages of thousands upon thousands of dollars of “Gifts and Benefits” he received just in those two years - does he declare any aspect of that trip to Kenya.
I guess he was just there for a week, attending multiple ceremonial events, as Some Guy From Saskatchewan.
Yep. Uh huh. Sure.
In 2020 ETG Commodities was the Sask Party’s top donor with a gift of $50,000.
At this point I’m going to remind you again that the Sask Party is not a charity.
If ETG Commodities wanted to show gratitude to the people of Saskatchewan for providing lentils, or whatever, for their businesses, there are plenty of hospitals and other foundations in the province that would gladly have accepted $50,000.
Make no mistake - that $50,000 to the Sask Party was payment for services rendered.
In February of 2020 Scott Moe personally visited ETG’s operations in Swift Current along with local MLA Everett Hindley. Maybe he picked up the cheque personally?
The pandemic curtailed Sask Party jet-setting for a couple years, but in April 2022 Jeremy Harrison was back in India, where he says he met with four of Modi’s cabinet ministers as well as attended a couple food production shows, with a special focus on lentils.
In May 2022 Scooter was off to Dubai, where he provided a “keynote” speech at a pulse industry event organized by the Global Pulse Confederation and “participated in” a Global Pulse Conference Innovation Panel with Protein Industries Canada.
In November 2022 the government of India, despite the mounds of documented proof in the public domain since 2015, announced there wasn’t “sufficient evidence” of collusion over pulse pricing between ETG Commodities and other multinationals.
India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership since 2014, has become a real beacon of democracy, so I’m sure that result is legit.
“Since Modi took office in 2014, and especially after winning reelection in 2019, he has systematically taken a hammer to the core institutions of Indian democracy. The prime minister’s government has undermined the independence of the election supervision authority, manipulated judges into ruling in his favor, used law enforcement against his enemies, and increased its control over the Indian press.” - Vox, The world’s largest democracy is collapsing before our eyes, June 21, 2023.
You just know the Sask Party is taking notes.
But I digress.
In February of this year Saskatchewan’s Minister of Agriculture David Marit did a whirlwind tour of New Dehli, Mumbai and then Dubai. It was pulsemania.
“While in India, the Minister met with representatives from the Indian government (Ministries of Agriculture, Food processing, and Consumer Affairs), and influencing market groups such as the Forum of Indian Food Importers FIFI and the National Agriculture Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED)… addressed the international pulse industry… Sixth edition of the Pulses Conclave held in Mumbai from February 16-18… meetings with large pulse and agrifood companies and trade partners, such as Viterra, ETG, Esarco Exim, Agrocorp International, Seasons Overseas, and Tata Consumer Products.” - Out-of-Province Ministerial Travel report, David Marit
ETG Commodities dedicated a Facebook post to Marit’s February 17 visit.
Interestingly, ETG’s post references Richelle Bourgoin as part of that visit. Bourgoin is not listed as one of the participants on Marit’s travel form.
She is, however, listed on Scott Moe’s travel form, who bowled up to India with Stephen Harper less than a week after Marit left India to fly on to Dubai, where he attended another food trade show where ETG Commodities was a major vendor.
Why did Scott Moe and Stephen Harper need to spend your tax dollars to fly to India just days after David Marit? Why was Richelle Bourgoin at an ETG meeting with Marit the week before Moe arrived, then stayed on to junket with Moe and Harper?
Good questions.
What did Moe do in India?
Lentils of course! Pulses! More pulses! Lentils everywhere! Look, it’s Stephen Harper!
Moe also spent time in Prime Minister Modi’s office, natch, though unfortunately he wasn’t able to meet with his mentor.
But even after all this, these are the lines that strike me the most from the Sask Party’s travel forms regarding their 2023 vacays in India and Dubai, beyond the focus on lentils and pulses:
“While in Mumbai, Premier Moe met with… current or potential Indian investors in SK…While in Delhi, Premier Moe met with…Two other potential investors in SK.”
David Marit “met with UAE government representatives… discussed investment opportunities in SK for some Gulf capital interests.”
Forgive me in advance for my language, but what the fuck are these elected clowns doing on our tax dollars discussing investment in private Saskatchewan companies with overtly undemocratic, demonstrably corrupt foreign regimes and in the same industry circles as huge Sask Party donors?
Is ANYBODY paying attention?
This. Is. Not. Okay.
This is not best practise or above board for any government anywhere, yet in Saskatchewan we’re just putting it right out there on expense forms.
You know enough about these guys by now to know they’re not doing this because it’s in the best interests of Saskatchewan residents. It’s corruption in plain sight and history is going to destroy the legacies of the likes of Jeremy Harrison and Scott Moe when the truth about everything that’s going on here comes out.
In the meantime they are all so entitled, so arrogant and stupid that they believe it won’t.
“Speaking on Gormley on Tuesday, Moe said these (India) trips are about unfettered market access.”
Oh for sure. If anyone can achieve “unfettered market access” with India or the United Arab Emirates, it’s the Saskatchewan government. Mmhmm. Uh huh. Yep. For sure.
If you believe that, well, I have some lentils from India to sell you for at least ten times what they’re worth.
So to recap:
in September of 2019 Scott Moe met with top Sask Party donor Greg Yuel and Craig Kielburger, while a lucrative sole-sourced contract for Kielburger’s Kenya-based organization was on the table;
in October 2019, the Sask Party granted Kenya-based ETG Commodities, through an old Saskatchewan holding company held inexplicably by ETG’s shareholders in India, free reign to purchase agri-real estate in Saskatchewan;
in November 2019 Jeremy Harrison embarked on his first jolly holiday to India;
in December 2019 Scott and Krista Moe took a personal, absolutely-paid-for-it-themselves, nothing-to-see-here trip to Kenya;
in 2020 ETG Commodities gave the Sask Party $50,000;
post-pandemic and within just ten months, from April 2022 to February 2023, the Sask Party has travelled on your tax dollars and sent its politicians to India three times.
Let’s be very clear: while you know clowns like Harrison, Harper and Moe are in these countries trashing Canada’s Prime Minister, foreign relations and foreign trade policy lie completely under federal jurisdiction. There is absolutely no good reason for a provincial government to be travelling this much to these countries. Market forces like global conflicts and climate change dictate the speed, volume and price of agricultural commodities from Saskatchewan, not visits from Scott Moe or Jeremy Harrison.
There is no good or democratic reason for this much Sask Party travel to India and the United Arab Emirates, especially when coupled with ETG’s $50,000 donation and its extensive interests in those countries. I know for a fact if I keep looking I’d find more, but this post is long and complicated enough and I need to move on.
I’m like the Littlest Hobo of Sask Party corruption.
Anyway, have a great long weekend. I’m homesick. I wish I was there, but writing these kind of truths about Saskatchewan is what made it impossible to do so and live there at the same time.
Speak soon,
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