Both Fried and Bergmann have worked closely over the years with Gaetz, who sponsored Florida’s early medical marijuana laws.
Fried helped the company, then known as San Felasco Nurseries, win a license.
Fried chose not to reveal her investment in the marijuana company while running for agriculture commissioner or during her first year in office.
Fried, whose net worth has grown from about $270,000 to about $1.4 million since being elected, disclosed the investment last year after the Republican-led Florida Legislature forced her to do so by changing blind trust laws.
A spokesperson said Fried hasn’t had any involvement in the company’s day-to-day operations, though she has helped finance a shareholder lawsuit related to the terms of Harvest’s 2018 acquisition of San Felasco.
Fried and Bergmann met through their work in the medical marijuana industry and began dating shortly before Fried decided to run for agriculture commissioner in 2018.
She lobbied the Florida Legislature to legalize hemp production and then stood up a regulatory structure for the new industry.
In January 2019, Bergmann sold about $4.7 million of his Surterra stock, according to a document Bergmann filed in court in Georgia, where he went through a protracted divorce.
Another document filed in the divorce showed that, as of October 2020, Bergmann had interests in roughly a dozen cannabis businesses.
For instance, Bergmann is an investor in a Miami-based company called One Hemp Brands LLC, which, according to an employee, extracts CBD oil from hemp plants and sells it wholesale to other manufacturers.
In June 2020, after consulting with the state’s ethics commission, Fried issued a memo recusing herself from any decision-making regarding certain types of hemp-related businesses and delegating that authority to a longtime agency official.