This was a rather stupid plot point they just introduced. First, in what they describe as "economic benefits" (It generates wealth the same way filling holes that were just dug so they could be filled generates wealth; Sure some people might profit from that, but I'll bet a lot of the people in that room are people who were paying for the reconstruction, not getting money from it), and second, but more importantly, if you are going with a "we can deliberately cause natural disasters" conspiracy, it actually got to be a conspiracy heavily limited in who they announce it to, not just tell it to a room full of people, even if they are rich and powerful. Specially when if they ever get discovered, anyone who didn't try to oppose it is going to be getting terrorism charges, even if they are rich and powerful, at least if they ever release it somewhere too important to overlook.
Yeah that's a reasonable criticism, it's not an inherently bad plot idea and it's certainly absolutely believable that powerful people would be interested in artificially harnessing magic monsters to various ends. But it feels executed poorly at least on its face. A direct current manga contrast would be the current arc of
Tsui no Taimashi, which also deals with an underworld rich&powerful auction featuring illicit use of magic. However, unlike here that is extremely clearly a criminal enterprise and it's run like it. Restricted invite list, extreme caution in identification and security of invitees, who are not allowed to have any idea exactly where it's located, significant security that can get bypassed only because the infiltrators are themselves very powerful, skilled and highly experienced black ops specialists backed by a serious organization who have done advanced planning. The criminals aren't at all revealing everything going on either. Here though it's clearly and unapologetically fully criminal, yet at the same time it's treated so randomly and for such curiously small stakes. It'd have been better done (again on the face of it) if either it was vastly more secret/veiled, or if it was something extremely distasteful but not necessarily illegal, and perhaps even morally gray. For example if it was a military contractor sort of event, where they're talking about using them as next generation weapons of war, and thus "getting rid of excess magic" but effectively dumping it on other countries as part of combat. That would be nasty in one respect, but at the same time might be fully legal, IRL militaries have often and still do often have weapons that are quite bad and would attract protesters but are fully legal for them to use.
However, one other possibility: I said "on the face of it" because it's also possible this being so stupid is itself a purposeful setup, they're trying to root out moles and such. But even then I'd still say it wasn't done that well if only because that should be so obvious, and their backer or at least a few of the team (who shouldn't be
quite so naive anymore vs at the beginning) should have some suspicion of
"hey wait a second, doesn't this seem too easy? why are they just showing off their criming? didn't they just ask us all for ID, we're well known faces. Won't their be cameras everywhere?"
Given it's a magic setting the author could have had them deploy some sort of stealth magic or
something, it's weird how there is no depth here at all.