An apparent recruiter for asset management juggernaut BlackRock told an undercover journalist during a sting that components of Big Finance are in the business of buying off both people and politicians.
The O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) published the video of a man reported to be named Serge Varlay, who says he works for BlackRock before telling a woman he believes he is on a date with at multiple locations sworn secrets of his business practices and operational ideology.
“All of these financial institutions, they buy politicians,” Varlay said. “You can take this big [expletive] ton of money, and then you can start to buy people.”
Varlay continued, “Let me tell you it’s not who the President is, it’s who is controlling the wallet of the President.”
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When the journalist asked Varlay who it is that would be controlling the wallet of a president, the recruiter responded, “The hedge funds, BlackRock, the banks, these guys run the world.”
Varlay alleged that a U.S. Senator could be “bought” for as little as $10,000.
He gave his date an example: “I could give you $500k right now, no questions asked.”
“Are you going to do what needs to be done?”
“It doesn’t matter who wins. They’re in my pocket at this point,” he added.
The Veritas method
O’Keefe Media Group belongs to James O’Keefe, a man who as the former leader of Project Veritas led the group to run successful and high profile stings on a number of targets.
During O’Keefe’s tenure, heads on his wall included a CNN Technical Director who admitted the network ran a campaign to eliminate former President Donald Trump, a campaign of ballot harvesting in the Minneapolis Somali community for Democrat House of Representative Ilhan Omar, and a series of stings against employees of Big Pharma COVID vaccine pillars Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer.
But in November 2021, O’Keefe and other Veritas journalists were raided by the FBI in connection to an investigation surrounding the notorious diary of U.S. President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley.
By February 2023, O’Keefe was forced out of the Project Veritas he founded amid internal fighting. After he launched OMG, Veritas sued him in May alleging O’Keefe has attempted to solicit donations from its donors.
As for the veracity of Serge Varlay’s career, the name is a match to a LinkedIn profile for a man who works as a Technology Recruiter for BlackRock since May 2022.
Before that, Serge Varlay worked as a “Sourcer” for Citadel Securities, one of the biggest market makers on Wall Street, from December 2020 to April 2022.
From 2016 to 2020, Varlay worked as “Talent Acquisition” and “Resource Solutions” for both Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.
However, while the Serge Varlay LinkedIn profile still appears in the Google search cache as of time of writing, it appears to have been deleted, but not before it was saved to the internet archiving sites.
Providing some insight into how the talent acquisition and recruitment divisions of Big Finance operate, the journalist baited Varlay during one date in a restaurant, “You’re kind of like a [expletive] gatekeeper at Blackrock!”
He replied, “Yeah, I am. I decide people’s fates. Every [expletive] day, I literally decide how somebody’s life is going to be shaped.”
“The whole thing, of like, domination, from a concept, it’s just…it’s so [expletive] interesting,” he continued.
‘Ukraine is good for business’
BlackRock is of incredible significance to both the U.S. and world economy. The asset manager was reported in July 2022 to be managing over $10 trillion in assets by Bloomberg.
Holdings include major portions of nearly every single company in the world, such as the latest stock market darling Nvidia, of which it holds almost 183 million shares, according to the most recent March 31 SEC filings.
Nvidia closed March 31 at a price of $277.77. Today, it’s trading at $438.08.
OMG’s reporter also thought to probe the man on his opinions on sensitive topics such as the Ukraine War.
“Ukraine is good for business, you know that right? Russia blows up Ukraine’s grain silos and the price of wheat is going to go mad up,” Varlay responded. “The Ukrainian economy is tied very close to the wheat market, global wheat market.”
“Prices of bread, you know, literally everything goes up and down. This is fantastic if you’re trading. Volatility creates opportunity to make profit. War is real [expletive] good for business,” he continued.
Varlay’s statements are consistent with market data. The price of wheat futures traded on the Chicago Board of Trade skyrocketed from a low of 740 points in February 2022 to a high of more than 1,363 points by March.
The last time wheat futures traded so parabolically was in 2008 during the Great Financial Crisis.
The man added that Wall Street has no interest in peace in Ukraine.
“We don’t want the conflict to end. We don’t want the conflict to end as a country. The longer this goes on, the weaker Russia is,” he told the woman.
Under the radar
Varlay also told his date that for the companies he has worked for, they invest so widely and become so wealthy from annualized returns, “Then you can start to buy people.”
When it came to network media and its news reporting, Varlay also told his date, “It’s propaganda.”
“What does news feed on? They feed on tragedy…That’s what people like to watch.”
“When nothing’s happening, who the [expletive] watches news? I don’t watch the news,” he said.
At some point, Varlay began to suspect his date was really a reporter.
During a clip where the two are speaking in an empty field at what appears to be something of a picnic with an open bottle of wine, he asks, “You’re like an undercover reporter. Normal people don’t give a [expletive] [about these things]. It’s beyond them.”
In later clips, Varlay is shown telling OMG’s reporter that BlackRock “don’t want to be in the news.”
“They don’t want people to talk about them. They don’t want to be anywhere on the radar,” he said.
When the date asked why, he responded, “I suspect it’s probably because it’s easier to do things when people aren’t thinking about it.”
As the business practices and investor activism in the form of the far-reaching Environmental Social Governance (ESG) corporate social credit system of BlackRock and its rival Vanguard have become more and more public, losses to the company’s balance sheet have been meaningful.
In December 2022, the Florida government pulled some $2 billion it had invested in the firm’s hands, citing ESG as a cause. Missouri pulled a half-billion in investments in October for a similar reason.
In May, Oklahoma banned not only BlackRock, but 12 other financial institutions such as JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo from doing business with state enterprises over ESG-linked campaigns against the energy industry.
