Mysterious Chinese firm in spotlight
PATRICK Ho flew to New York in fall 2014. His intention, according to the US Justice Department, was to bribe African officials on behalf of a private Chinese conglomerate with global ambitions.
In meetings at the United Nations, Ho, a former Hong Kong civil servant, laid the groundwork for millions of dollars of payments to the president of Chad and Uganda’s foreign minister in exchange for oil rights in the two countries, federal prosecutors say.
The accusations, detailed in a criminal complaint filed in New York, became public this week after officials charged Ho and Cheikh Gadio, a former Senegalese official, with international money laundering and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Gadio was arrested Friday and Ho on Saturday.
The complaint does not name the Chinese company Ho represented, but the specifics of the case make clear the company’s identity: CEFC China Energy Co.
Details outlined by the Justice Department reveal the innovative tactics the company pursued to secure coveted oil rights in Chad and Uganda through its nonprofit think tank in Hong Kong, where Ho was an executive.
CEFC has risen suddenly from a little known Chinese company to a major player in the global energy business with investments in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. In September, the Chinese conglomerate took a $9 billion stake in Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned energy giant and a subject of sanctions by the United States.
CEFC has played to China’s geopolitical ambitions. It is among a small number of Chinese companies to receive Beijing’s approval to chase splashy deals at a time when the government has mostly restricted overseas acquisitions. The investments have meshed with China’s strategy to court other countries through infrastructure and energy investment.
Chinese businesses like CEFC are increasingly mixing money with diplomacy as they scour the world to secure valuable natural resources. The criminal complaint against Ho shows how the practice can be distorted, offering rare insight into a vast, mysterious conglomerate with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
CEFC provides all of the financing for the China Energy Fund Committee, a Hong Kong research organisation. The conglomerate’s founder, Ye Jianming, is listed as a chairman on the think tank’s website.
Through Ho, the think tank brokered the approaches to officials in Chad and Uganda, prosecutors say. Details included in the complaint about the company and think tank were confirmed by news releases from CEFC’s website.
In a statement, CEFC disputed the allegations.
CEFC has emerged from obscurity in recent years as a player in the China’s plans for a modern day Silk Road, scooping up businesses in the oil, travel and financial industries in the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Spain and the Middle East. Along the way, it has grown into a behemoth with revenue of nearly $40 billion in 2015, according to corporate disclosures.
Ye, 25 when he started the company, has been both a corporate leader and a diplomatic envoy of sorts, posing for pho- tographs with leaders like President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, and President Idriss Déby of Chad.
CEFC has sought major oil deals outside China, playing a major role in President Xi Jinping’s One Belt One Road initiative to bring developing countries on China’s periphery closer to its orbit through infrastructure projects.
In September, CEFC agreed to take the stake in Rosneft. In October, Chan Chauto, the company’s president, met with President Vladimir Putin of Russia at an investment forum in Moscow.
CEFC also has a joint venture with Kazakhstan’s national oil company, KazMunayGas In- ternational, which has given it access to a network of oil and gas terminals in Europe.
It was the company’s pursuit of oil rights in Africa that attracted the Justice Department’s attention.
Ho met Gadio, a former foreign minister in Senegal, at the United Nations with a proposition, according to the complaint filed in New York. CEFC wanted to expand its oil operations into Chad, and to do so with CNPC, a state-owned Chinese company facing a $1.2 billion fine in Chad for environmental violations.
Gadio, who helped broker a peace agreement that ended the military conflict between Chad and Sudan, used his friendship with Déby, Chad’s president, to help facilitate a CEFC pledge in early 2015 that it would make a $2 million “donation” to Déby for charitable causes, according to documents obtained by the Justice Department.
The pledge was intended to influence the government to give CEFC the exclusive rights to certain oil blocks, federal prosecutors say. In the end, the company acquired other oil rights from a Taiwanese company. But Chad’s fine against CNPC was ultimately lowered to $400 million.
In a statement, CEFC said its deal with the Taiwanese company was a “financial investment in Chad” that did not involve any other “interest” from the country’s government.
Edward Y Kim, Ho’s lawyer, declined to comment. Robert Baum, a lawyer for Gadio, said that his client’s “integrity and honesty have never been questioned. The current charges do not reflect the decades of work he has admirably and capably performed.”
Around the time that Ho met with Gadio, he also initiated contact with Uganda’s foreign minister, Sam Kutesa, according to the complaint. Kutesa had just become president of the UN General Assembly, according to the Justice Department. Over the course of a year, the two struck up a friendship, the complaint says.
By 2015, Kutesa, in his General Assembly role, had appointed Ye as a “special honorary adviser”, officials said.
When Kutesa returned to his position as Uganda’s foreign minister, he solicited a payment from Ho in the form of a donation for a charitable foundation that he planned to launch, according to the Justice Department. The payment was actually in exchange for oil contracts, according to US officials. Ho wired $500,000 into a bank account designated by Kutesa, who is not charged in the criminal complaint.
The Ugandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment. CEFC said it had no investment in Uganda.