Three Chinese-owned companies have agreed to shell out $7.3 million to resolve allegations they submitted false claims in order to secure COVID-19 relief loans, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in a Tuesday press release.
Greenland LA Metropolis Hotel Development LLC, Greenland US Management LLC, and Greenland LA Metropolis Development III, known collectively as the Greenland USA Entities, agreed to dish out the money after they allegedly violated the False Claims Act by submitting false claims to obtain Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans for which they were not eligible, according to the DOJ. Trial Attorney Lindsey Roberts of the Civil Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Carter for the Eastern District of Wisconsin handled the matter, the DOJ said.
The Greenland USA Entities could not immediately be reached for comment.
“Congress created the PPP to help American small businesses during the pandemic, not to fund large Chinese-owned corporations. Here, however, the defendants are alleged to have provided false information to the [Small Business Administration (SBA)] to obtain government funds to which they were not entitled,” U.S. Attorney Brad D. Schimel for the Eastern District of Wisconsin said in a statement, according to the DOJ press release.
“This settlement demonstrates that the U.S. Attorney’s Office takes seriously its obligation to combat fraud and protect American taxpayers,” Schimel continued.
In their PPP loan applications, the Greenland USA Entities certified that they were eligible for the program. However, the U.S. alleges that the Greenland USA Entities were ineligible for both the first and second round of PPP loans due to the firms being affiliated with other companies in the U.S. and China and, together with those affiliates across the world, employed more people than allowed under the SBA’s size standard for their industry, according to the DOJ’s news release.
“What a fraud. Three Chinese companies in the US owned by the Shanghai government submitted false claims to get PPE money,” Lily Tang Williams, a Republican candidate for New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District, wrote in an X poston Tuesday. “Disgusting!”
Williams, who was born in and grew up in China, is known as a prominent critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Greenland USA is a “leading developer of residential and commercial properties that transform communities and exemplify modern living” which has “invested more than $8 billion on the east and west coast” in the U.S., according to the company’s LinkedIn profile.
The PPP was a program established in 2020 by the CARES Act and implemented by the SBA with support from the Treasury Department, which aimed to provide COVID relief to U.S. small businesses. Many pandemic-era relief programs such as the PPP have been targeted by fraud, experts previously told the Daily Caller in Oct. 2024.
A Marietta, Ga. man was convicted by a federal jury of bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering after he obtained a fraudulent $9.6 million PPP loan and filed fraudulent tax returns that generated a $3.4 million Internal Revenue Service (IRS) refund, the IRS announced on July 30. Additionally, 11 individuals were indicted for stealing over $2 million in pandemic relief funds, the SBA’s Office of Inspector General announced on Dec. 12.
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