Originally published in Covert Action (US online magazine), October 2024

Peter Thiel needs no introduction. I refer you to Jeremy Kuzmarov's "Sugar Daddy Of Trump's VP Pick Has Deep Ties To CIA" (17/7/24). Kuzmarov's article was prompted by Thiel's latest move, namely his bankrolling of JD Vance, Trump's pick as his Republican Vice President.

The clue is the headline of an article about the same subject in the New Zealand Herald - "Kiwi Billionaire Peter Thiel's Money Links To JD Vance, Donald Trump's Running Mate" (17/7/24).

Secretly Given NZ Citizenship

"Kiwi billionaire"? That's right, Peter Thiel is a New Zealander, although a distinctly lapsed one. He was given New Zealand citizenship, something he kept secret for years until outed by the NZ media. And true to form, he is a controversial figure among his "fellow New Zealanders". It's a fascinating story of power, money and influence.

The story broke in 2017, when NZ media questioned why his company's purchase of an $NZ13.5 million lifestyle block in Wānaka did not require any involvement by the Overseas Investment Office (OIO), which is tasked with approving (or, very rarely, declining) applications from foreigners to buy NZ rural land. The reason given by the OIO was simple - Thiel is not a foreigner; he is a New Zealand citizen. That was the first anyone had heard of it.

What's more, he was granted NZ citizenship in June 2011, so it had been kept secret for six years. Bill English, the National Prime Minister in 2017, said that Thiel had been given citizenship under the heading of "exceptional circumstances" for those who did not meet residency rules (Thiel had been granted residency in 2006).

"Peter Thiel went on a public relations blitz where he gave public appearances and donated money ahead of being granted New Zealand citizenship. The timing of his $1 million Canterbury rebuild effort became clearer - it was in April 2011 and he was granted citizenship in June that year. He also invested in New Zealand technology companies, visited for a conference, and talked up the country in press interviews. Thiel called New Zealand a 'utopia' in a January 2011 Business Insider article. Thiel also made a January 2011 investment of an undisclosed amount into Pacific Fibre, a failed attempt to build a second undersea Internet cable" (Press, 27/1/17, "PM Defends Billionaire's Citizenship").

Major Media Interest

The NZ media started to take a keen interest in Thiel. The Press headlined the front page of its January 25, 2017, issue with "Super-Rich Buying Up NZ Boltholes", with a front-page box titled "Trump's Billionaire Buddy A Kiwi Citizen", illustrated by a photo of Trump and Thiel together. And the Press filled the first two pages of its January 26, 2017 issue about him. The front-page banner headline read: "Money Talks: NZ Havens For Sale?" (this was in the days when the Press was a broadsheet; now it's a tabloid, except on Saturdays).

The article itemised Thiel's New Zealand properties - a house in Auckland; a property nicknamed "the plasma house", in Queenstown, plus the already mentioned lifestyle block in Wānaka. It was accompanied that same day with an editorial headed "Stop Stonewalling On Thiel Questions", the main one being how did he acquire New Zealand citizenship under "exceptional circumstances"? He didn't even have to come to New Zealand to pick up his citizenship - it was granted to him at a private ceremony at the New Zealand Consulate in Santa Monica, California.

And the NZ media started digging into Thiel's core business. "New Zealand spy agencies and our elite Special Air Service soldiers have long-standing commercial links with a controversial big-data company founded by surprise Kiwi Peter Thiel, the Herald can reveal. An investigation into Thiel's links to New Zealand has found his firm Palantir Technologies has counted the New Zealand Defence Force, the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau as clients with contracts dating back to at least 2012" (New Zealand Herald, 9/3/17).

Unique

The surprises kept coming. "The circumstances of Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel's New Zealand citizenship were so exceptional they have not been repeated, (Department of) Internal Affairs figures show. Thiel was made a Kiwi by then-Internal Affairs Minister Nathan Guy in June 2011 under a rarely-used 'exceptional circumstances' clause of the Citizenship Act, allowing the technology investor and libertarian to sidestep requirements to have lived - and intend to live - in New Zealand".

"Internal Affairs, following requests under the Official Information Act, provided figures to the Herald of the number of cases where a Minister had granted citizenship under the exceptional circumstances clause where prior and future residence requirements were not met. The results appear to show Citizen Thiel is unique" (New Zealand Herald, 15/3/17).

How To Only Need 12 Days To Gain Citizenship

The real bombshell revelation came in June 2017, conveyed in this Press headline: "Thiel's 12-Day Citizenship Shortcut" (30/6/17). Potential New Zealand citizens have to spend at least 1350 days in the country over a five-year period before being eligible. Thiel spent 12 days, spread out over four trips during the five years before he was granted citizenship. "Exceptional circumstances" indeed! The politician who, as Minister of Immigration, granted Thiel's citizenship in 2011, defended his decision when it was exposed in 2017. The same Government was still in power in 2017 but with a different Minister of Immigration - interestingly, he said he would not have given citizenship to Thiel.

Art Exhibition Devoted To Thiel

The most quirky manifestation of New Zealanders' sudden interest in "our fellow citizen" and the scandal surrounding how he came to be one was that Thiel got an art exhibition devoted to him in 2017, which went on to tour the country in following years (I saw it at the Christchurch Art Gallery). This was Simon Denny's "The Founder's Paradox". Denny is an interesting and very political artist. He represented New Zealand at the 2015 Venice Biennale with "Secret Power".

This "simultaneously looked at the graphic design culture of America's National Security Agency and New Zealand's place within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance" (Bulletin 194, December 2018, Christchurch Art Gallery, Anthony Byrt). Nicky Hager went to Venice with that exhibition, named after his 1996 book which first exposed the world of the Waihopai spy base, the agency that runs it - the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau - and the Five Eyes spy alliance, of which Waihopai and the GCSB are integral parts. I refer you to my article "We Told You So. Waihopai Is A US Spy Base And A Warfighting One" (Watchdog 166, August 2024).

Denny's exhibition was about Thiel's decidedly strange world view, which is one typical of extreme libertarian Silicon Valley billionaires. In his case, it also incorporated his obsession with JRR Tolkien's "Lord Of The Rings" books (his spy software is named Palantir after a magical artefact in the books, an upmarket crystal ball). The exhibition was designed as an elaborately detailed game, illustrating the world view of Thiel and his mates.

For instance, he appears in it in a giant portrait as an "Immortal" prepared to do battle with the dragon of Democracy and all the other scary monsters that keep the One Percenters tossing and turning in their boltholes. Thiel is an irony-free zone - he made one of his rare visits to his land of citizenship-of-convenience to see the exhibition for himself when it was on in Auckland in 2017.

What caught my attention, from a CAFCA perspective, was this quote from the Christchurch Art Gallery's Bulletin (cited above): "...What we didn't anticipate were the New Zealand-connected rabbit-holes we'd quickly end up down: Thiel's deep fixation with 'The Lord Of The Rings', for example, or his links to the life-extension scientist and biotech venture capitalist Laura Deming - an expat New Zealander".

"Then there was the strange story of Wharekauhau Lodge. In the mid-1990s, a group of investors - many of them prominent libertarians - participated in a property deal for a large farm station and luxury lodge in the Wairarapa. Among them were former New Zealand Finance Minister Roger Douglas and the extreme-libertarian authors of one of Thiel's favourite books, 'The Sovereign Individual: How To Survive And Thrive During The Collapse Of The Welfare State', the American James Dale Davidson, and the late British peer Lord William Rees-Mogg (whose son Jacob is a key player in pro-Brexit British politics) ...".

The individuals behind Wharekauhau Lodge (Roger Douglas et al) were the subject of CAFCA's first ever "not of good character" complaint, back in the late 1990s, under the provisions of the Overseas Investment Act, to what was then called the Overseas Investment Commission (OIC; now the Overseas Investment Office [OIO] And it needs to be pointed out that none of those people are still involved with Wharekauhau Lodge). To cut a long story short, our complaint was not upheld.

The best mainstream NZ media article on Thiel's NZ connection (he is the prime example of a "boltholer", having purchased here what is referred to by the 1% as "billionaires' apocalypse insurance") is Matt Nippert's "Citizen Thiel" in the New Zealand Herald, February 2018

He's Ghosted The Country Ever Since

The irony is that once Thiel was granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011, he essentially ghosted the country. By the time the story broke in 2017, it was all very much in the slipstream of his private jet. American writer Max Chafkin wrote a fascinating 2021 book entitled "The Contrarian: Peter Thiel And Silicon Valley's Pursuit Of Power". It offers some insights into Thiel and New Zealand.

"The New Zealand house, as well as a roughly five-hundred-acre parcel of farmland some forty miles north that he later acquired, wasn't about partying; as the panic room suggested, it was an escape plan. Like many within his network, Thiel was a bit of a prepper - a term used to describe people who believed that the end of the world, or civilisation at least, would take place within their lifetime, as they stockpiled gold and firearms, sometimes in underground safe rooms".

"This was, in other words, another kind of hedge, and New Zealand - remote, English-speaking and with a Right-leaning Government then led by a wealthy former foreign exchange trader, John Key - was an attractive destination for a conservative billionaire with a paranoid streak. Thiel was looking for more than a bunker; he wanted a backup country" ...

"... The giant plot of farmland remained untouched and undeveloped. There was no bunker - and Matt Nippert, the Herald reporter who'd broken the news of Thiel's citizenship, had begun to suspect that Thiel had given up on the idea shortly after Trump's election. 'It was a hedge', he told me (Chafkin). Thiel, he concluded, was worried about Democrats changing US tax policy. But after Trump won - and New Zealand's Rightwing National Party government was replaced by the country's Leftwing Labour Party under Jacinda Ardern in 2017 - he lost interest". Jeremy Agar reviewed "The Contrarian" in Watchdog 159, April 2022.

Refused Permission To Build Luxury Lodge

But Thiel has not completely severed his ties to New Zealand. He set about spending several years trying to get permission to build a luxury lodge on his Wānaka land. That did not end well for him. He ran into a foe more formidable than he was used to encountering - New Zealand bureaucracy. "American billionaire Peter Thiel appears to have abandoned his plans for a luxury lodge in Wānaka. The lodge, on the shore of Lake Wānaka, was designed by architect Kengo Kuma and Associates, a company known for designing the Tokyo Olympic Stadium. It includes three interconnected lodge buildings, and two standalone buildings with 11 visitor accommodation suites, housing up to 30 guests".

"But the Otago Daily Times has reported that the Environment Court confirmed Thiel's company, Second Star Ltd, had not lodged an appeal to the High Court, after an earlier appeal was declined. In June (2024), Stuff reported that Second Star Ltd appealed a Queenstown Lakes District Council independent panel's decision to decline consent for the visitor accommodation at Damper Bay to the Environment Court. In a decision from May (2024) Judge Prudence Steven and Commissioner Mark Mabin declined the appeal, largely due to the visibility of the proposed lodge on an Outstanding Natural Landscape site".

"'We acknowledge that the design of the proposal is attractive and responsive to its setting', Judge Steven said. 'However, the buildings stretch across the site for some 190m which ... is nearly the length of two football fields'. Curved roof elements would not significantly mitigate the horizontal effect of the lengthy building and 35m of glazed windows, Stuff earlier reported" (Stuff, 28/7/24)

Thiel's project was thwarted by a combination of the local Queenstown Lakes District Council (it did not comply with their planning rules) and local environmentalists. The latter definitely did not like Thiel or his well-publicised opinions. A spokesman for the Upper Clutha Environmental Society was quoted as saying: "I suggest that the applicant leave his anti-democratic ideas in the United States when he comes to New Zealand" (Press, 25/5/22, "Council Planner Unmoved By Benefits Of Luxury Lodge").

The question must be asked - what was the attraction of New Zealand to Thiel? Well, as already mentioned, he's a "Lord of the Rings" nerd, to the nth degree (although I doubt that he sees himself as a hobbit; more of a lord or, preferably, a king). And this is the country that has built a very lucrative niche tourism industry out of the fact that Peter Jackson made his blockbuster "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy in this country at the turn of the century.

"Billionaires' Apocalypse Insurance"

That's a real thing - there has been plenty of international and local media coverage about foreign billionaires wanting to hedge their bets with some prime New Zealand real estate. There is plenty of evidence of "boltholers" (Thiel is not alone) but no credible evidence has ever been found of the bunkers that these people are rumoured to have had installed on their NZ properties. It is an endless source of fascination - during New Zealand's extremely strict 2020 covid lockdown, I was interviewed by phone from Denmark on the subject of billionaires, boltholes and bunkers (that remains my only ever appearance in the Danish media - in Danish, too).

Actually the "insurance" turned not to be worth much when the apocalypse really did come knocking. In 2020 the Ardern Labour government declared a state of national emergency, and immediately slammed the border shut indefinitely, locking out virtually everyone from overseas - including New Zealand citizens who were living abroad or out of the country when it happened. No exceptions were made for the likes of Citizen Thiel. It was a very hard job for citizens to get back into the country.

I know, because it affected my immediate family. My wife Becky became stuck overseas and only got back courtesy of a repatriation flight organised by the New Zealand government (which was at very short notice and very expensive). Upon arrival, everybody on that plane was compulsorily isolated for two weeks in one of the country's otherwise closed and deserted hotels, under military guard, as were all other arrivals in that period.

Was that a popular policy? Later in 2020, NZ held its' scheduled general election and the Ardern government won by one of the biggest landslides in NZ history - reflecting gratitude at its draconian measures keeping NZ's 2020 lockdown death toll to 26 (and zero cases of flu or other respiratory illnesses that winter).

What Of "Kiwi" Thiel Now?

He's still hedging his bets. In 2022 it was reported that he had applied to buy Maltese citizenship - that country sells passports. And he may not be finished with New Zealand. In August 2024 he told US broadcaster Joe Rogan that he was thinking of moving to New Zealand, blaming California's "confiscatory taxation. ..'The extreme thing I keep saying is I can't decide whether to leave the state or the country,'' Thiel said, adding it was 'tough' to choose a new home because much of the world was 'doing so much worse' than the United States" (RNZ Business, 20/8/24).

And there is one final irony in this. Thiel is said to have lost interest in New Zealand when Jacinda Ardern's Labour government won the 2017 election. She shocked the country in early 2023 by resigning as Prime Minister and retiring from politics (dooming her Government, which was heavily defeated in the 2023 election).

Where is she now? Living in the US, where she has celebrity star power among the "liberal elite" - in 2024 she made a public appearance at the Democrats' National Convention and was quoted in a Time cover story on Melinda French Gates. In September 2024, she was given an award at a glitzy ceremony in Venice hosted by Oprah Winfrey. She's a highly paid speaker at various international events. Those are the circles she moves in now.

With his nemesis now in the US and the Government now in power in New Zealand being much more billionaire-friendly, it is possible that Thiel may deign to spend more than 12 days in his country of citizenship. But very few New Zealanders will be heartbroken if he doesn't. And I have no doubt he'll be very happy in Trump's America.

Watchdog - 167 December 2024