In response to a public records request, the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation released emails and text messages regarding interactions among Trustee Gabrielle Rubenstein, employees of the corporation and potential investors or current investors.

Here are the documents.

The key emails are from Marcus Frampton, the chief investment officer of the corporation, and from Allen Waldrop, the head of private equity at the corporation.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times published an account of the controversy that should wake up the Alaska Legislature.

So far, Rep. Cliff Groh is the only one to call for legislative oversight because of the inadequate response of the trustees.

The most important piece in the Financial Times story is that Rubenstein is now directly contradicting—through her father’s spokesman—claims made in emails by two of the leading executives of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.

She claims she did not set up an APFC meeting with her dad and that she did not attempt to get investment associate Catherine Hatch, a corporation employee, fired. Her spokesman claims these are “falsehoods.”

Waldrop, the head of private equity for the APFC, wrote on February 5 that “Ellie arranged a meeting” with David Rubenstein, referred to as DMR.

Frampton, the chief investent officer, said that he heard Rubenstein say that Hatch should be fired. She said her father had met Hatch and was not impressed.

“Ellie told me that Allen or I should be meeting with her father, not an analyst,” Frampton wrote on February 5.

Carlyle, the private equity giant, told the Financial Times that it arranged the meeting, not the APFC.

“The leaked emails portray Rubenstein as eager to arrange meetings between staff and her business partners in private funds, though these rarely produced concrete results,” the Financial Times said.

It is important to note in the Financial Times coverage that the long-time spokesman for the Carlyle Group, who is also the spokesman for billionaire David Rubenstein, is the spokesman for his 36-year-old daughter, the Permanent Fund trustee.

This puts the Carlyle Group and David Rubenstein in the spin room.

David Rubenstein’s spokesman is quoted as saying that Gabrielle Rubenstein made “about 20” investment referrals to APFC staff.

This conflicts with what Gabrielle Rubenstein said at a public meeting on May 9, 2023. Rubenstein said that she received one or two calls a day from people who wanted to be placed in touch with the chief investment officer of the Permanent Fund and that she forwarded emails to Frampton for him to decide what to do.

“She played no role in investment decisions and no capital was deployed to those investment firms,” Rubenstein spokesman Chris Ullman said about the 20 referrals.

Frampton had a different view of Gabrielle Rubenstein’s messages and the number.

“As we all know she has made dozens upon dozens of investment manager referrals in her 18 months on the APFC board,” Frampton wrote in January. “Many of these have been in the private credit space and my team has declined to pursue all of them.”

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