McConnell's Wife's Family Business Appears on Trump Admin's List of Companies That Received Most PPP
A shipping business started by Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao's family received at least $350,000 in loans set aside for companies struggling as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to data published Monday by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Chao's parents launched Foremost Group in New York in 1964. The company is currently run by her father and sister, according to the company's website. Its application for a Paycheck Protection Program loan was approved on April 15, the SBA's data shows. While the exact loan amount was not included in the report, the SBA said a loan between $350,000 and $1 million was approved, enabling the company to save 20 jobs.
"The PPP is providing much-needed relief to millions of American small businesses, supporting more than 51 million jobs and over 80 percent of all small business employees, who are the drivers of economic growth in our country," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a news release announcing the PPP data.
"We are particularly pleased that 27% of the program's reach in low and moderate income communities which is in proportion to percentage of population in these areas," he said, adding that the average loan size was $100,000.
https://www.newsweek.com/mcconnells-wifes-family-business-appears-trump-admins-list-companies-that-received-most-ppp-1515788
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K&R for exposure
Mitch McConnell’s Freighted Ties to a Shadowy Shipping Company
After drugs were found aboard the Ping May, a vessel owned by his wife’s family’s company, Colombian authorities are investigating.
By Lee Fang Twitter
OCTOBER 30, 2014
Mitch McConnell’s father-in-law, James Chao (second from right), at the christening of the Ping May in Shanghai (Image: Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation)
Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about ninety pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.
The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnell’s in-laws, the Chao family.
Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell’s life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That’s because, like many international shipping companies, Chao’s firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.
Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao with James Chao (image:
ElaineLChao.com)
McConnell’s ties to the Chaos go back to the late 1980s, when James Chao began donating to the senator. In 1993, McConnell married James’s daughter, Elaine Chao, a Republican activist and former Reagan administration official who would later serve as secretary of labor in the George W. Bush cabinet. James Chao emigrated to the United States from Taiwan, and founded the Foremost Maritime Corporation upon settling in New York. The company has grown significantly over the years, from acting as maritime agent during the Vietnam War to controlling a fleet of approximately sixteen dry-bulk cargo ships in operation today.
More:
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mitch-mcconnells-freighted-ties-shadowy-shipping-company/
