ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – A controversial land swap proposal for a portion of the Guana Preserve remains shrouded in mystery, even after the proposal was pulled.
MORE | ‘We did it!’: St. Johns County leaders celebrate after Guana land swap proposal withdrawn | St. Johns County residents call for protection of natural spaces after decision to drop land swap at Guana Preserve
Questions and rumors are still swirling about who the mysterious backers of the deal are.
The land swap proposal from The Upland LLC came to light just days before a vote that was originally scheduled for Wednesday.
It sparked immediate pushback from locals and conservationists.
News4JAX looked into the complex world of corporate anonymity, where it’s perfectly legal for LLCs to shield the identities of the true owners.
Not even Florida lawmakers have been able to determine who was behind it.
”All we know is probably what you know, they were established in February and we don’t know the parties in particular,“ Florida State Rep. Kim Kendall said Tuesday.
Kendall is talking about The Upland LLC, a business structure that provides limited liability protection to its owners, who are called members.
News4JAX did some digging and found that The Upland LLC is registered to an entity called Contega Business Services, a company that provides LLC registration services and is also affiliated with a Jacksonville law firm.
That LLC registration company is the only identifiable information immediately available about who is responsible for the company.
It’s a similar situation with New Outpost LLC – the company that owns the piece of land next to the Guana Preserve – that was mentioned in the land swap application. That LLC traces back to Contega Business Services as well – with no other identifiable contacts.
Locals and conservationists want to know who wanted to get a hold of public conservation land.
Financial expert Joe Krier who works for Tidal Flow Trading, said entities like the Contega group help companies maintain their anonymity through LLC registration.
“I can certainly understand why [people would] want to know who’s behind it, and I can understand why the people proposing it would not want to be known, because they knew it would be controversial with the conservationists in North Florida,” Krier said.
Krier said federal law can require the identity of the backers to be released.
“If they really needed to, there is a Corporate Transparency Act that was effective in 2024 that requires LLCs to report beneficial ownership information on FinCEN, and it’s, you know, it’s a public database. They call it that. But really, you’d have to get a federal regulator involved to look under the hood and see who’s really behind it,” he said.
News4JAX also spoke with business expert and attorney Parag Amin, who says even if the land swap deal was approved, the identities of the LLC members could have remained unknown.
“Because the law in Florida does require a public hearing, but ultimately it doesn’t necessarily require the ultimate disclosure of who the beneficial owners are, and if at the public hearing or throughout the process that disclosure is not made, it is not a basis for invalidating the deal. So said differently, the deal could absolutely go through while the public has no idea who the owners of this entity are, and that’s the biggest problem, because without transparency, it’s not government, it’s just theater,” Amin said.
Contega Business Services is a registered agent for hundreds of companies across Florida, though in some cases, there are other contacts listed in addition to Contega.
Other companies in Florida provide similar registration services as well.
Gov. Ron DeSantis was asked about the owners of The Upland LLC on Tuesday and he didn’t give a clear answer as to who they are, and if he knows their identities, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
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