According to information obtained by DailyMail, Nancy Pelosi’s son is the second-largest investor in a $22 million Chinese company whose top executive was detained in connection with a fraud probe.
This raises concerns regarding his covert trip to Taiwan with his mother.
- Paul Pelosi Jr, 53, worked for the telecom firm Borqs Technologies in a board or consulting capacity in addition to investing, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records.
As compensation for his services, he received 700,000 shares, leaving him the fifth-largest shareholder in the business.
He surpassed one of the company’s two co-founders in stock ownership when other insiders sold shares in June 2021, and was only surpassed by CEO Pat Sek Yuen Chan.
- In connection with a reported fraud probe, Chinese law enforcement detained the president of one of Borq’s subsidiaries in September 2019 and took copies of contracts and accounting data.
Pelosi Jr. was not mentioned among the top 10 stockholders in a later SEC filing from May 2022, indicating that he has fallen in the list since the previous year.
- Neither company has connections to Asia, and none processes lithium that has been mined, according to Nancy’s spokesman Drew Hammill. Both presently bring in no money.
The role Pelosi Jr. played in the Beijing-based business was only recently made public, following a trip to Taiwan by him and his influential mother to demonstrate support for the country that China controvertibly claims as a section of its own territory.
The formal delegation that the Speaker’s office sent out did not include Pelosi Jr.
- The Speaker acknowledged in a statement this week that when questioned by the press, her son served as her “escort” on the trip instead of her husband.
The House Speaker’s current drive to combat Chinese government aggression abroad and its corporate influence in the United States may be complicated by Nancy’s son’s connections to the Chinese company.
The House Speaker and Pelosi Jr. were pictured with Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, and other top Taiwanese figures during their 19-hour visit.
The future of her son’s Chinese interests is in doubt after the Chinese government branded the visit as “vicious” and “provocative” and even threatened ambiguous consequences against Pelosi and her family.
Chinese telecom business Borqs, with a market valuation of $22 million, is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange and focuses on “Internet of Things” devices.
Nancy Pelosi has been developing a coalition in the House for a comprehensive anti-China bill that started in the Senate.
In 2020, she declared her support for a bipartisan plan that would prevent some Chinese corporations from listing on US stock exchanges.
In a September 2019 SEC filing, Borqs revealed the Yunnan provincial police action against one of their top officials.
“On September 11, 2019, the Yunnan Public Security Bureau (the ‘Bureau’) detained the president, one employee and one former employee of Yuantel, the MVNO business unit that the Company is in the process of selling, for questioning,” the company filing said.
“Officers of the Bureau also took copies of contracts between Yuantel and Shandong Yafeida Information Technology Co., Ltd. (‘Yafeida’) and a copy of Yuantel’s accounting records.
“According to an article published online in China on June 10, 2019 by the Economic Report, four persons from the management of Yafeida had been arrested and accused of fraudulent activities, and no further details have been released as of the date hereof. Yafeida purchases SIM cards from Yuantel and other MVNOs and mobile operators in China.
“No charges have been made against the president or any employee of Yuantel. The Company will cooperate with the Bureau in connection with this proceeding. The operations of Yuantel and the Company are continuing as in the past. There have been no other details released by the Bureau as of the date of this report.”
Since then, it does not appear that Chinese authorities have disclosed any new details on the inquiry.
- In accordance with documents filed with the SEC by Borqs in June 2021, Pelosi Jr. bought 700,000 shares of the business through a “employee benefit plan.”
‘These are shares that were acquired by our officers, directors and affiliates, or that were acquired by our employees or consultants, under an employee benefit plan. Such officers, directors, affiliates, employees and consultants are the selling stockholders identified in the reoffer prospectus,’ the document said.
- Pelosi Jr. had the second-largest stake after the stock was sold, with 400,000 shares remaining. Chan, the company’s founder and CEO, had 1,108,569 shares, Anthony Chan, the chief financial officer, 262,938, and Hareesh Ramanna, the managing director of Borqs India, 193,380.
Though the stock price has since sharply declined, the 400,000 shares Pelosi Jr. had at the time were still worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Pelosi Jr. may have continued to be a shareholder, according to a letter sent to the SEC in March 2022.
What position Pelosi Jr. held at the business is unknown.
According to a spokesperson for the Speaker, press statements concerning legislative delegations abroad “never include spouses or adult children.”
According to him, Pelosi Jr.’s trip was “at no expenses to the taxpayer,” he did not undertake any official business, and “per decades-old policy, spouses and adult children are allowed to travel on Congressional delegations for representational purposes.”
- Paul Horcher, a former Republican state assemblyman from California who lost his seat in 1995 after voting to keep Democrat Willie Brown as speaker, was another significant shareholder in the business.
According to the June 2021 SEC report, Horcher received 50,000 shares for unknown work for Borqs but did not sell any.
- The Thai-American restaurateur Yah Lin Trie, a friend of Bill Clinton, had previously designated the former Republican lawmaker as the recipient of a $4,000 donation.
However, payments made by Trie have since been returned due to concerns that they came from foreign sources.
According to a 1997 Wall Street Journal article, Trie gave the political present to Horcher’s campaign when the Republican lawmaker disobeyed his party and voted to keep Speaker Brown. Horcher claimed to not know Trie to the Journal.
In 2020 and 2021, Pelosi Jr. was named to the boards of two lithium mining businesses.
After his visit to Taiwan, the world’s largest lithium mining hub, his nominations have come under increased scrutiny.
- In December 2020, he became a member of the Nevada-based Altair International Corp. advisory board. According to a news release at the time, the position included “making explicit introductions between Altair and potential strategic partners in the various industries of interest for expansion.”
He also assumed leadership of EVSX Corp, a St. Georges Eco-Mining Corp. subsidiary, in January 2021.
The newly established subsidiary is “dedicated to electric vehicle battery recycling and future partnerships in the development of lithium mineral resources,” according to a news statement from St. Georges.
Nancy denied that her son accompanied her on a work trip to Asia on Wednesday, telling reporters that “His role was to be my escort.”
“Usually, we [invite] spouses, not all could come, but I was proud he was there,” she said.
Pelosi Jr. has been to China with important figures.
He tweeted a picture of himself and John Kerry, who was the secretary of state at the time, in Beijing in June 2016 along with the message, “China-United States Summit: Americans Pleasantly Surprised and Welcome in Beijing, China.”
China-United States Summit: Americans Pleasantly Surprised and Welcome in Beijing, China #… https://t.co/FVGpmwoNoh pic.twitter.com/M7FE5nh2JH
— Paul F Pelosi Jr (@paul_pelosi) June 11, 2016
In September of that same year, he tweeted a picture from a Chinese-sponsored tourism fair in San Francisco that featured, among other things, a giant radio telescope built in China. The caption read: “Big Saucer-Eyed China Hears Universe, Happy 67th Birthday People’s Republic of China #soldierforchange #China.”
As previously reported by DailyMail.com, Pelosi Jr.’s business associates were the subject of six federal investigations, and several of them were found guilty of fraud.
The Speaker’s son was never charged and no one has accused him of taking part in the illicit behavior.
The last telecom position held by Pelosi Jr. was also with a business under criminal investigation.
- In 2007, Pelosi Jr. was made vice president of a business whose CEO was a major Democrat fundraiser and was under investigation for making scam calls to senior citizens.
Despite having a full-time work as a home loan officer at Countrywide Home Loans in San Mateo and possessing no experience in database marketing, the speaker’s son was hired for a $180,000 job as Senior Vice President at the data company InfoUSA.
- Vinod Gupta, a significant Democrat donor who had been the subject of a criminal probe by the Iowa Attorney General’s Office since 2004, ran the business.
Investigators alleged that InfoUSA deliberately sold the personal information of millions of customers to fraudsters who then exploited the data to swindle elderly people out of some of their life savings.
According to the Times, InfoUSA also offered names of seniors who were “Suffering Seniors,” or individuals who had cancer or Alzheimer’s. The data provider denied that these titles were on their listings.
- According to the state’s AG, investigators in Iowa discovered emails demonstrating that InfoUSA employees were aware that the companies they were selling to were under investigation for deceitfully targeting elderly individuals but nevertheless went ahead and sold the data to them.
Gupta and InfoUSA were not charged despite their cooperation with the Iowa scammers investigation.
Following the conclusion of the investigation, the business declared that it has altered its procedures and “never characterized individuals on lists as “gullible.”” A list of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” “Suffering Seniors,” or “Oldies But Goodies” is not one that infoUSA compiles.
- Even while Pelosi Jr. denied it at the time, several people thought Gupta chose Pelosi to win over his influential mother.
“I don’t think that’s really what happens,” he told news site NewsMax in 2007. “I don’t see it that way, but I could see why you’d ask the question… I guess you always wonder why somebody hires you, right?”
Source: GreatGameIndia