Oct. 8 (UPI) — The United States has sanctioned a Fiji-based businessman with ties to the Chinese Communist Party over his alleged involvement in “significant corruption on behalf of China-based actors.”
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement Wednesday that Zhao Fugang, director of the Beijing-sponsored Overseas Chinese Service Center in Fiji, was being publicly designated for abusing his position “by paying bribes to Fijian citizens to advance China-based government, business and criminal interests.”
“His actions constituted significant corruption and adversely affected U.S. interests in Fiji,” he said.
The sanctions render him and his immediate family generally ineligible for entry to the United States.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global nonprofit investigative journalism organization, reported that Australian law enforcement and intelligence agencies suspect Zhao of being a senior member of a criminal syndicate involved in drug smuggling, money laundering and human trafficking. Zhao was designated an Australian Priority Organization Target in 2023, according to the report.
The OCCRP states that the Chinese Communist Party uses diaspora members like Zhao to advance its interests through a strategy known as the United Front, which, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, is a political strategy implemented through a network of organizations seeking to advance the party’s objectives by co-opting and neutralizing sources of potential opposition.
Zhao has denied the previous allegations of criminal wrongdoing.
The U.S. Embassy in Suva, the capital of Fiji, alleged that Zhao’s alleged activities “have left Fiji vulnerable to malign foreign influence facilitated by Chinese government, business and criminal actors inside and outside of Fiji.”
“Corruption stunts opportunities for foreign investment and foreign assistance, facilitates organized crime, offers a permissive environment for malign actors, drives illegal migration and undermines citizens’ faith in government,” the embassy said online.
“This directly impacts U.S. national security, economic and foreign policy interests and those of our partner nations and is why the department is taking these actions.”
Andrew Harding, policy analyst for national security and Indo-Pacific affairs at the conservative The Heritage Foundation think tank, said the State Department’s public designation of Zhao should serve to deter others from engaging in similar conduct.
“Zhao’s actions directly harm shared U.S.-Pacific interests, and no freedom-loving country should tolerate this corruption,” Harding said on social media.
“This should only be the beginning of exposing malign Chinese influence operations in the Pacific.”
Zhao’s lawyers told Australia’s ABC News that they were unaware of U.S. investigation and would ask the U.S. government for clarity over the allegations.
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