Just about a year ago, in the fall of 2014, the Vermont EB-5 Regional Center was one of 17 honored for the number of I-829 approvals that had been granted relative to projects within the center’s purview during the federal government’s 2014 fiscal year. The 116 approved I-829s represented the creation of 1,160 jobs across seven separate projects coordinated through the Regional Center.
Projects funded through the Vermont EB-5 Regional Center have included the Jay Peak Ski Resort and the Trapp Family Lodge. Another was Seldon Technologies, a water-purification device manufacturer.
It appeared as things were going well at Seldon until the company suddenly closed its doors without warning, leaving all of its 32 employees unemployed.
We should now expect that opponents of the EB-5 program will come out of the woodwork (some already have) to give the Vermont center a black eye. What they are missing, however, is the fact that, since the I-829s had been approved, all of the investment requirements had been met.
Whatever happened to Seldon was not a fault of EB-5. The company recently claimed to have an order for 500,000 of its devices in hand for school systems in Mexico. That would seem to indicate that it was not the project per se that had been a problem. Rather, it had to be a management issue post investment. Seldon was founded in 2002 and was acquired by a South African company in 2013. It is not unreasonable to assume, therefore, that the investors have had their investments returned, although that is not yet known to be factual.
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