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April 25, 2011
Kunpeng, consultancy promoting AY to immigrant investors in China, among firms willing to deceive regulators, according to newspaper investigation
Atlantic Yards Report
There's new evidence that consultants helping Chinese millionaires immigrate, as in the program involving the "Brooklyn Arena and Infrastructure Project," are skating toward fraud.
In this case, the evidence does not involve the EB-5 program, in which investors park $500,000 for a purportedly job-creating project in exchange for green cards for themselves and their family, but rather a similar Canadian program.
Kunpeng International, a consultant prominent in promoting the Brooklyn project as an associate of the New York City Regional Center (NYCRC), an investment pool working with Forest City Ratner, has been identified as one willing to deceive Canadian regulators.
(Kunpeng's head is at right in the photo with the Empire State Development Corporation's Peter Davidson, who provided a certificate during a roadshow in China last October. That proclamation, as I wrote, elides the difference between the Brooklyn Arena and Infrastructure Project before the potential investors--purportedly the arena, infrastructure, and railyard--and the Atlantic Yards project as a whole, which would produce many more jobs and potential benefits.)
Helping a fictitious applicant
In a 4/22/11 article headlined How China’s ‘crooked consultants’ help the rich enter Canada, the Globe and Mail reports that a fictitious potential immigrant created for the purposes of the article--who has the required minimum $1.6 million CAD in assets but not the required documentation providing the wealth is legitimate--was offered help in sugarcoating his past by 18 of the 22 China-based immigration consultants approached.
Of the 22, 12 said that even a criminal record--jail time for stabbing someone in a fight--could be overcome:
If the relative were to persuade – bribe, if necessary – someone at his local police station to issue such a certificate, explained an agent at Kunpeng International, a Beijing-based firm, Canadian officials “can’t come to China to check the archives” in person.
John Ryan, chief executive officer of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, a former consultant in China, told the newspaper that business ethics in China are flexible:
“In Chinese culture, they feel that, in dealing with governments, they need an edge. They don’t really understand that, in our Canadian system, they can deal openly and honestly with the government and be dealt with fairly.”
NoLandGrab: Is it us, or does our system sound much closer to China's than to Canada's?
Posted by eric at April 25, 2011 11:00 AM