[ad_1]
First and foremost, the Mr. Chao company operated until 2018 and which is now run by Ms. Chao’s sister Angela has received hundreds of millions of dollars in loan commitments from a bank run by the Chinese government for build new dry bulk cargo vessels at Chinese Government-owned Shipyards. In January 2017, Angela Chao became Director of Bank of China, one of the country’s four largest lenders.
Planning for the trip to China included discussions about a meeting with Mr. Chao and a “former senior Chinese official” who had been a classmate of his and now lived in Shanghai, according to the inspector general’s report. The report does not name the former government official, but Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese president, attended the same university as Mr. Chao in the late 1940s in Shanghai. This school – Shanghai Jiao Tong University – was on the planned route.
Mr. Chao regularly met Mr. Jiang during his trips to China. During Mr. Jiang’s tenure as head of the ruling Communist Party from 1989 to 2002, the two met at least six times, The Times reported in 2019. Notably, Mr. Jiang received Mr. Chao and his wife. in a villa inside the Communist. The Party leadership in Beijing at the end of August 1989, near the site of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square that had taken place less than three months earlier.
Ms. Chao’s trip was ultimately canceled just weeks ahead of schedule – and after the plane tickets were purchased – when State Department officials raised their own ethical concerns.
Four days before Mr. Rosen took part in the discussion on ethical issues, Ms. Chao was present with her father and sister at the Harvard Club in New York for the signing of a contract with a Japanese builder to deliver two cargo ships to Foremost, according to a report from a Chinese news company.
In 2018, staff from Ms. Chao’s office helped edit chapters of a biography of Mr. Chao, even though a “staff member acknowledged that the publication had no specific connection to DOT,” says the report of the Inspector General. After helping edit the book, Ms. Chao’s staff then developed a marketing strategy targeting journalists to “build Dr. Chao’s profile,” and other organizations such as Columbia University and the publication of the Lloyd’s List shipping industry to promote his family.
Steven G. Bradbury, then the attorney general for the Department of Transportation, told investigators he was “aware of the matter,” told the family book that agency staff members had been working on. , “But that wouldn’t be appropriate for the secretary.” to ask his subordinates to work on these posts. “
[ad_2]
Source link