From the inestimable Michael Patrick Leahy comes what we’ve all suspected, but now know. Something ain’t right with McAuliffe’s GreenTech.
Mr. Yeung funded his company with $1.6 million, according to court records, and intended to raise capital from Chinese investors through the EB-5 immigration program to finance automobile manufacturing operations in the United States. The EB-5 program awards green cards to foreigners investing in businesses in the US.
…and precisely how does this work? Very simple. Through the EB-5 program, if you invest a certain amount of foreign capital in America, you and a bunch of your friends get green cards.
Under that program, according to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Gulf Coast Funds Management is authorized to “work with investors in the [GreenTech Automotive Inc.] project through the EB-5 program, which offers foreign investors two-year green cards for themselves and their immediate families for $500,000 investments that create at least 10 jobs.”
So who founded whom?
On October 7, 2009, Mr. Wang announced that his GreenTech Automotive Inc. company was going to invest $1 billion to build an auto manufacturing plant in Tunica, Mississippi. The Memphis Daily Newsreported at the time that “[t]he Mississippi-based startup automobile company owned by Xiaolin (zhee-OW-lin) “Charles” Wang will build a hybrid-automotive plant on 1,500 acres at a rural Tunica County megasite. . . With an initial price tag of $1 billion, the project’s first phase is expected to create 1,500 jobs and produce 150,000 vehicles a year beginning in 2012.”
The Memphis Daily News also reported that Mr. Wang said, “[f]ormer President Bill Clinton also has been active in the project, traveling to Hong Kong and introducing company representatives to heads of state at his recent global initiative.”
Two days later, on October 9, 2009, Terry McAuliffe entered the picture, when he organized a separate Virginia company, WM GreenTech Automotive Corp., which he personally owned 100%. It was not until March 2010, however, that WM GreenTech Automotive Corp. established a formal relationship with Mr. Wang’s GreenTech Automotive Inc.
Folks, this is where it gets very tricky to connect the dots — and seeing as GreenTech has been keen to litigate against anyone reporting on this story — the Franklin Center in particular — you have to be very redundant connecting the dots. In other words, best of luck trying to squash this into a soundbyte.
For those looking for it, GreenTech seems to be more about the green cards than anything else. The timeline for this “founding” of GreenTech simply doesn’t add up, and the utter absence of facilities in Mississippi merely drives the point home:
Where’s the jobs, Terry?
…and if we’re seriously going to turn this campaign onto the dime of ethics, while the McAuliffe campaign will desperately try to turn this into an argument over Cuccinelli’s lack of ethics — a contradiction in terms achingly failing in common sense — it will only be to distract Virginians from McAuliffe’s enduring absence of this word from his own personal dealings.
