
U.S. Bribery Case Sheds Light on Mysterious Chinese Company - thisisit
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/business/china-energy-cefc.html
======
thisisit
From the article (emphasis mine):

> 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.

The whole little known to major player seems to be becoming a recurring theme
for Chinese companies.

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baybal2
Nothing surprising. CCP is rather crude in the way they create proxy companies
to hide direct involvement of the party.

They do not learn that it is always looks suspicious if a never heard of
entity begins moving 10 digit sums around.

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mattnewton
Maybe they don’t learn, maybe they don’t care: it’s how they play ball in
their home court, they bet they can do it elsewhere too.

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frisco
These are Chinese nationals working for a Chinese company in Africa. Why is
the US DOJ involved?

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kazinator
If I were to guess, they have connections to American customers, supplies,
investors or whatever who might be implicated in some sort of wrongdoing,
breaking American laws.

There is no mention in the article of any such thing though.

Basically, there are just these tidbits:

1\. Mr. Ye has rubbed shoulders with some famous Americans, like Allen
Greenspan and Henry Kissinger.

2\. Mr. Ye's think tank has some relationship with the UN and has organized
conferences that that _" have featured senior American military officials and
Chinese People’s Liberation Army generals."_ (That being relayed information
evidently gleaned from that think tank's website itself.)

So I think we have to fall back on general observations about US being the
self-appointed policeman to the world. If anyone is bribing anyone's ass
anywhere, and it ruffles U.S. feathers for any reason (like some U.S. ventures
in that area are disadvantaged), it's a US DOJ matter!

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whatupmd
It’s stated within the first 4 sentences of the article...

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frisco
It says the meetings happened at the UN, with which he has an official
affiliation. UN headquarters has a special relationship with NY (and the US)
and generally there is immunity involved and no ability for the US to refuse a
visa. This was a key carve out for locating the UN secretariat in NYC.

~~~
wavefunction
You can't fly to the UN with your official affiliation to commit crimes.
That's not the way that diplomatic immunity works.

~~~
frisco
It really is though. In most cases all they can do is kick you out. In some
cases the foreign government can waive immunity to allow prosecution, but it’s
rare. This guy wasn’t a diplomat though so diplomatic immunity doesn’t apply.
Regardless of that, my understanding from having grown up going to an
international school in NYC where most of my friends were there because their
parents were assigned to the UN, is that there’s a weaker form of effective
immunity that basically is just that the UN grounds are not trivially part of
the US. So it’s not clear to me why US bribery laws applied to a foreign
national on foreign business inside the UN? My guess is that the practical
answer is just that the US are world police and so they do what they want.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_immunity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_immunity)

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tryingagainbro
Bribes are the greatest investment in third world countries, or almost as
profitable as lobbying in USA :).

The corrupt PM that demands $50 million for that wireless license or $1
Billion road doesn't care much about the equipment or prices, after all you
paid him and he knows you have to make it back. He will remove all your
troubles.

~~~
ams6110
In the USA there may be one or two more layers but "lobbying" often boils down
to "bribery" in the end. It's just not quite so flagrant.

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tryingagainbro
Worse since it's legal. With "bribery" at least you risk jail and huge fines.

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t1o5
How does this gratify one's intellectual curiosity ?

As per the guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle
or talking points. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures.
If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

~~~
linkregister
It's relevant as I'm applying to YC18 with Bribely, a bribery-as-a-service app
that uses machine learning to discover which official to bribe, then properly
launder the sum to avoid regulatory interference.

/s

