Excerpts from the Book "Secret Empires"

Then there was the disappearance of $1.8 billion in U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed money. Both Joe Biden and John Kerry championed $1.8 billion in taxpayer-backed loans to be given to Ukraine courtesy of the IMF. The funds were being loaned to the country to keep the country’s financial markets liquid. Much of that money would go through Kolomoisky’s PrivatBank. And more than $1 billion from Privat just simply disappeared.

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McConnell and Chao have seen their wealth increase dramatically in a matter of just a few years. In 2004, they had an average net worth of $3.1 million according to public disclosures—well below the senate average of $14.5 million. Ten years later, they had a net worth of between $9.2 million and $36.5 million. The key: in 2008 they received a gift from Elaine Chao’s father, James. The Chao family fortune comes from the Foremost Maritime Corporation (later renamed Foremost Group), a shipping firm that her father founded, and which remains a family business. James Chao is the chairman, and Elaine’s youngest sister, Angela, is deputy chairwoman, running the day-to-day operations. Another sister, Christine, is Foremost’s general counsel.

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So what family role do McConnell and Chao play, exactly? As these two have held court in Washington, Foremost has thrived, thanks in large part to close relations with the Chinese government. As McConnell and Chao have risen in political stature, these relationships have only strengthened.

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More recently, Senator McConnell has worked to upend legislation that would be damaging to Beijing. In September 2011, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act (S.1619) was introduced in the Senate. The bill punished countries with “fundamentally misaligned currenc[ies]” by tacking on import duties. While it did not explicitly target China, the bill was considered a direct response to China’s undervalued currency, which threatened U.S. competitiveness in the international marketplace and made U.S. goods more expensive in China. McConnell was adamantly opposed to the bill.

Source: Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends (2018) by Peter Schweizer.