Re: Chinese Miracle Box Free Download
Joseph Zyiuahndy
But the arrival of a couple of mysterious strangers threatened to change all that. With buckets of cash at their disposal, the Chinese pair, Cary Yan and Gina Zhou, had grand plans that could have thrust the Marshall Islands into the growing rivalry between China and the West and perhaps fracture the country itself.
But when President Heine argued against the draft law, she became a target herself. In November 2018, pro-RASAR politicians backed by Yan and Zhou pushed a no-confidence motion to remove her from power. She survived by one vote.
Even then, the president said she had no idea who this influential duo really were. Although they seemed to be Chinese, they carried Marshall Islands passports, which gave them visa free access to the United States. Nobody seemed to know how they had obtained them.
The plan came to an abrupt end in November 2020, when Yan and Zhou were arrested in Thailand on a U.S. warrant. After being extradited to face trial in New York, they pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to bribe Marshallese officials.
They gained access to the U.N. after paying over $1 million to diplomats and fixers. Among those who helped them were staff of the former president of the U.N. General Assembly, an alleged Chinese agent, and a disgraced ambassador then already under investigation by the FBI in a separate case.
Eryn Schornick, a Washington, DC-based transnational financial crime expert, said Yan and Zhou are part of what appears to be a growing trend of Chinese criminals and scammers who seek to associate themselves with the U.N. and the NGOs that surround it.
But this $150-a-bottle miracle water was in fact a multi-level marketing scam. Promising investors that they could resell the water for a profit, the brothers defrauded nearly 20,000 victims out of more than $18 million, the Chinese court eventually found.
Yan arrived in Silicon Valley looking to hype the product internationally. There, he met Zhou, who had first come to the U.S. as a student and was employed at a company working on a quixotic bid to build high-speed rail in the state.
But Yan was ambitious, and a suburban business next to a coin-operated laundry was not enough. To give his healing water more cachet, Yan sought to attach it to NASA, with its world-renowned scientific credentials.
He did this with the help of Wing Kan Nip, a Malaysia-born entrepreneur who worked on the same rail project as Zhou. Nip shared documents and recollections of his time with the couple after being contacted by reporters.
Nip said Yan asked him to use his device to test the water, and issue a report explaining its miraculous properties. Marketing materials obtained by reporters show that the NASA brand soon became key to selling the bogus product. Bottles of the water also carried labeling that implied they were manufactured at the NASA research park.
Yan was even able to get photos taken of himself alongside Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. Secretary General at the time, in return for payment. This effort was only the first of a series of photo-ops with U.N. grandees that Yan arranged with the help of paid fixers in an effort to raise his stature.
According to emails from Nip, the Ban photos were made possible thanks to an introduction Liu and Edwards provided with the office of the president of the U.N. General Assembly, a position then held by controversial Ugandan politician Sam Kutesa.
The incident comes as no surprise to Michael Jacobson, chairman of the Montessori Model U.N., a New York-based non-profit that teaches students about global conflict resolution. Jacobson hosted Yan and his retinue at one Model U.N. conference and accepted a donation from the Chinese businessman. He later regretted it, he told OCCRP.
This was possible in part because he was well-liked in the diplomatic community, explained Carlos Garcia, a former El Salvadoran permanent representative to the U.N., who worked for Lorenzo in his dealings with Yan and Zhou.
U.S. prosecutors would later reveal that Yan had paid Lorenzo $1 million to facilitate the takeover. Westin, however, said she received less than $10,000 of that amount. Through a lawyer, Lorenzo declined to respond to questions for this story.
A procession of politicians, staffers, and U.N. diplomats from countries all over the world, including Mauritania, Maldives, El Salvador, and Bangladesh, came by the office. A typical visit involved formal-looking meetings around a conference table with views of the Midtown skyline, and group photoshoots in front of a flag-festooned wall, according to a cache of internal photos obtained by reporters. One delegation, from the U.N. mission for Sierra Leone, was gifted an oversized check for $50,000 during one 2017 visit in order to help the country recover from flooding. (The mission did not respond to questions.)
Once he was in the door, Yan used his U.N. foothold to promote a new range of schemes, including at least three separate cryptocurrency scams that Chinese authorities would later find defrauded investors of at least $130 million.
To do this, Yan and Zhou established at least two other organizations that they falsely claimed to be linked to the U.N. Along with a now-convicted Chinese fraudster named Charles Lu and his entourage, they used their three organizations to help market their digital assets as safe investments.
Two months later, Yan, Zhou and their entourage were in Kiribati, where they were warmly greeted by President Taneti Maamau and ministers. WOGC donated $10,000 for an event to promote locally-made clothing, Lambourne said.
They walked away having secured i-Kiribati financial licenses for four companies whose names hinted at greater ambitions: World Digital Central Bank, World Digital Stock Exchange, World Digital Lottery Group, and World Digital Finance International Holding Group.
The detonation of the first deliverable hydrogen bomb on the neighboring Bikini Atoll was supposed to produce an explosion equivalent to five or six million tons of TNT. But scientists miscalculated, and the bomb ended up being roughly 1,000 more times more powerful than the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima. As radioactive ash fell onto Rongelap, some curious villagers played with and even ate the strange, snow-like substance.
Westin said she was approached by the FBI in April 2019 and shared evidence that Lorenzo had helped Yan and Zhou take over her charity. Federal agents were able to build their case under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act because they found evidence that the U.S.-based charity was used to facilitate the bribery of Marshallese officials.
The U.S. government has not publicized the identities of most of the local officials who were offered bribes, although court filings make it clear they included about half a dozen members of parliament and other senior officials. The State Department declined to comment.
While Yan will remain in U.S. federal prison until near the end of this year, Zhou has already been released and deported to the Marshall Islands. She arrived in the capital, Majuro, on April 20 on a United Airlines flight wearing a bright red tracksuit, escorted off the plane by what appeared to be U.S. officials.
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Poverty alleviation is a universal value of the international community. In the new round of economic globalization, multinational companies have benefited from the efficient allocation of resources, global supply chains and value chains brought about by globalization.
However, at the same time, as global governance lags behind global practice, multinational corporations have not given back enough to regional and national development, and globalization has exacerbated inequalities among and within countries.
As the only major economy in the world to achieve positive growth last year, China has achieved the poverty reduction target of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule.
As the world's largest developing country, China has reduced poverty by more than 850 million people during the 40 years of reform and opening-up, accounting for more than 70 percent of global poverty reduction, creating a "Chinese miracle" in the history of poverty reduction.
Former US treasury secretary and Harvard University President Lawrence Summers lauded the achievement: "In less than two generations, China has evolved from an impoverished nation to a nation setting the pace in crucial aspects of artificial intelligence, a change that makes the industrial revolution look small."
First, China has embraced globalization since its reform and opening-up, thus driving its economy, the foundation of poverty alleviation. Poverty has been reduced because of international trade. "Trade is better than aid," as former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan voiced.
Over the past four decades, multinational companies have invested in China, contributing about 45 percent of import and export trade, more than 20 percent of industrial value added, 20 percent of tax revenue, and 13 percent of urban employment.
There are more than 200 million migrant workers in China, and the income of migrant workers at MNCs, and their remittances sent home have become an important source that promotes China's economic growth.
Since China joined the WTO in 2001, China's GDP has expanded more than tenfold. In 1992, the value of China's total international trade was $166 billion and 56.7 percent of the population was in absolute poverty.
In 1992, Vietnam's total trade came to $5.1 billion. And the percentage of population living below poverty was still at 52 percent. But today, Vietnam's total trade has gone up to $527 billion, a 100-fold increase. At the same time, the population living below poverty declined 26 times to below 1.9 percent.
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