Millions in pandemic aid go to foreign corporate criminals

Foreign-Owned Regulatory Violators Found Among PPP Recipients
By Phil Mattera for the Dirt Diggers Digest

Why are we subsidizing Korean Air Lines with pandemic relief small
business loans? (KAL website)

The massive Paycheck Protection Program was depicted as a necessary measure to save American small businesses, yet the list of recipients of the forgivable loans released by the Treasury Department contains numerous companies that are neither small nor American.

These include firms such as Jindal Saw USA LLC and JSW Steel (US) Inc., two affiliates of the Jindal Group, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate owned by one of India’s wealthiest families.

JSW Steel’s investments in the United States have been touted by Donald Trump, though the company later sued the U.S. Commerce Department when it was denied permission to import steel from India without paying a steep tariff.

Continental Carbon Company, owned by Taiwan’s International CSRC Investment Holdings Company (formerly China Synthetic Rubber Corporation), received a PPP loan worth between $5 million and $10 million.

These are two examples that have emerged from an examination of the PPP recipient list my colleagues and I have been doing as part of the integration of the data into our Covid Stimulus Watch website.

Here are some others:

• Giti Tire Manufacturing (USA) Ltd and Giti Tire (USA) Ltd, subsidiaries of Singapore’s Giti Tire.
• Sekisui Voltek, LLC, a subsidiary of Japan’s Sekisui Chemical.
• The U.S. subsidiary of Korean Air Lines (owned by the Hanjin Group).
• Asahi Forge of America Corporation, a subsidiary of Japan’s Asahi Forge.

It does not come as a complete surprise that foreign-owned companies appeared on the PPP list.

There was discussion of this possibility at the time the program was debated and enacted.

The issue then was whether such entities would be eligible for the loans if they were part of foreign companies with a workforce that surpassed the PPP employee limits.

The muddled guidance provided by the Trump Administration has apparently allowed funds to go to firms linked to foreign corporations that are far from small businesses.

Another concern has come to light as we match PPP recipients to the data my colleagues and I have assembled for our other database, Violation Tracker: some of these foreign companies getting PPP loans have a history of misconduct.

The U.S. operations of Jindal Group have paid more than $1.4 million in penalties, mostly resulting from workplace safety and health violations.

Continental Carbon has paid over $2 million in penalties, nearly all of which involved Clean Air Act violations. Giti Tire, Sekisui, and Asahi Forge have also paid penalties to OSHA and/or the EPA.

In 2007 Korean Air Lines had to pay a $300 million criminal fine to the U.S. Justice Department after pleading guilty to conspiring to fix the prices of passenger and cargo flights.

In 2018 Hanjin Transportation Co. Ltd., also part of the Hanjin Group, paid more than $6 million to the Justice Department to resolve allegations relating to a bid-rigging conspiracy that targeted contracts to supply fuel to United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force bases in South Korea.

In creating the Paycheck Protection Program, Congress probably did not intend to provide assistance to entities that are owned by large foreign companies and that had a track record of repeated regulatory violations and other serious misconduct.

Now that there is consideration of extending and expanding PPP, the question is whether such companies will continue to benefit from the largesse of American taxpayers.