The Hong Kong based Tan Family is behind most of the worst labor violations and corruption on the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a US Territory just north of Guam. Over the years they moved millions of dollars through Jack Abramoff to the Republican Party. It is corrupt and dirty money from a family-owned multi-national corporation that has built an empire from stolen labor, sweatshops, abuse, gambling, human trafficking and profits made by exploiting the absence of justice and oversight in the shadows of globalization.
I’ve written a lot about the CNMI. The sweatshops of Saipan led me to a (now) ten-year examination of trade, globalization and a Culture of Corruption flourishing in Washington DC.
For years Republicans protected the abuse on the CNMI. Fixing this should be a no-brainer for the 110th Congress, but things do not look good for CNMI Reform legislation.
It looks like the workers will be sold out for a box of fish, a stack of shoes, a rack of clothes or all three.
Why?
Money. Power. The usual.
To the jump...
Author’s note: this is a long, link-filled Diary. I hope it’s worth your time. Cheers.
Most people who know about the Tan Family make a vague connection to Saipan, sweatshops and the Abramoff scandal. This is a solid connection.
Those who dig a little deeper know about the deep ties between the Republican Party and the Tan Family. They know about more than $250,000 in recorded donations to Republican candidates from Tan Family members, employees and companies between 1996 and 2004. They know about the $223,679 paid by the Tan Family to help Jack maintain his multiple sports arena skyboxes in 2000.
Then there are the funds buried and barely reported that moved from the Tan Family through the Abramoff/DeLay network, such as $1.4 million from the Rose Garden Holding Co. (http://www.dccc.org/stakeholder/archives/004226.html) and the $2.35 million that flowed through the Tan Family controlled Western Pacific Economic Council.
One could also safely include the $620,000 from the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association and I firmly believe that the Tan Family was the driving force behind the CNMI Government sending Jack another $8,471,131. And then there is the very odd story of an address in Hong Kong that was used by Team Abramoff, the "Baby Jacks" (like the Alexander Strategy Group) and several other members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy as a money drop and House of scandal.
The rough total moved for the GOP through their bagman, Jack Abramoff was over $13.25 million.
They used much of this money to fund off-the-books operations like New Hampshire phone jamming and other operations designed to rig elections, "elect" Republicans and support the effort to establish one-Party rule in the USA.
And that is just the surface of what is known.
Odds are great, that millions of more dollars in funding is hidden in the 742,000 pages of Abramoff documents being kept under wraps as part of the McCain/Abramoff cover-up. And that is just money from the Tan Family—and they were not the GOP’s most generous patrons. This cover up of the Abramoff scandal is stunning and it is hiding in plain sight.
Beyond the money, there are crimes connected to the Tan Family that have been mentioned in the plea deals of Jack Abramoff and the members of his team who have chosen to plea guilty (see Ney's Aide Cops Plea = BIG trouble for the GOP for details). And ALL of the likely DOJ "persons of interests" in the ongoing Abramoff investigations (Ed Buckham, John Doolittle, Don Young, Tom DeLay, Kevin Ring and Robert Coughlin) have ties to the CNMI and the Tan Family.
I have been following this vile web of corruption for years. And for years every dollar spent and every serious lead in the scandal led to a Republican.
That changed in March 2006.
Those of us on Daily Kos who were—and are—researching corruption have been trading tips and leads for years. It is part of what makes this community so great. In March 2006, a fellow DKos researcher/writer sent me an email. She had been updating donations from the CNMI to a Republican Congressman she wanted to (and did) defeat in the coming election. She was surprised to see that members of the Tan Family sent Hillary Clinton $10,000 for her Senate re-election campaign:
KIM LAM, PEK, Homemaker; 9/30/2005; $2,000
TAN, JOISE, N/A/Homemaker; 10/2/2005; $2,000
TAN, RAYMOND, Luen Thai/President; 9/30/2005; $2,000
TAN, SIU L, Tan Holdings Corp./Chairman; 9/30/2005; $2,000
TAN, WILLIE, Luen Thai/COO; 9/30/2005; $2,000
She sent me an email. I checked it out and my immediate reaction was WTF?
I believed that it had to be a mistake. I felt certain that her campaign would take care of the problem as soon as the nature of the Tan Family was pointed out. I called, emailed and wrote Senator Clinton and her Senate Campaign. I even stop by her DC campaign office a number of times. There was no response. I was blown off. So towards the end of April 2006 I wrote a Dairy: WTF: Hillary taking $ from DeLay's sweatshop buddies. At the end of last year I wrote another. For more than a year and a half I have kept trying to get somebody connected to Senator Clinton and both of her campaigns (Senate or President) to pay attention.
I’m beginning to think that they do not care.
This summer I wrote another Diary, Sweatshop - Abramoff Cash = Trouble for Clinton about the donation. It was noted and discussed. Some HRC supporters took issue with an illustrative device I used in the piece. I wrote an "imagined" new article about how the media would twist the facts and some readers had trouble following the switch in narrative voice. Others took issue with a Diary title that seemed to morph the $10,000 donation from the Tan Family into one from Abramoff. They were both fair points. I should have been clearer (for the literally disabled) about the fictional news report, I regret that it still confuses some folks. And I was wrong to leave the impression in the title that money from the Tan Family might be the same as money straight out of Jack’s pocket. It is not the same. Any money directly from the Tan Family is far, far worse than any donation directly out of the pocket of Jack Abramoff. I regret that the title obscured that fact.
Ah, but it was only $10,000 they tell me. So it does not matter. And more than that, I was told over and over again that HRC may have taken the money, but she never did anything about supporting the Tan Family sweatshops. Some argued, free from facts or evidence, that she has been actively opposing the goals of the Family. Of course mentions of the CNMI, human trafficking, sweatshops and other topics related to the matter are absent from her web sites and record. Still, I was told, that the fact that HRC joined every other Democrat in supporting an increase to the minimum wage was all the proof I should need to drop the issue. But, it is not. I expect more from those who seek to be the Democratic nominee for President. I require actual facts and actual evidence of leadership.
The dialogue was interesting. As it went on, it revealed many misconceptions about the family and the abuse on the CNMI. These simplistic views need to be corrected—especially the simple-minded notion that the Tan Family are small time operators, your average penny-ante grifters who set-up sweatshops and them move on when their caught. Some HRC supporters, even suggested that the Tan Family and their Ten Grand are so small that nobody should or will notice them (unless jerks like me kept talking about it).
The view is part right. Nobody is noticing the Tan Family, their record of abuse and the money they contribute to the GOP and HRC. But we should pay attention. They are not small time players.
The Tan Family controls a massive empire of businesses that stretch the globe. Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars move through their vast empire. They have a constant stream of business before the government of the United States and since 1999 when Abramoff and DeLay successfully shut down reform on the Marianas Islands, most of the Tan Family legislative goals have had almost nothing to do with sweatshops on the CNMI.
I know that supporters of HRC are quick to dismiss any questions about their candidate as just another "Right-wing" smear and defensively claim that any questioning of her by Democrats and/or progressives might be used by the VRWC to attack her and all Democrats. Still, their dedication to a culture of fear does not exempt HRC from scrutiny or excuse wrong-doing. I can not be quiet because some in my Party are afraid of the noise machine on the Right. Whether it is the GOP or HRC, taking money from the Tan Family is and always will be a problem
I’ve done enough follow-up digging to know that there is more to this story—especially the massive donations from the Tan Family to the GOP (but also the money to HRC). Many more shoes will drop and the drip, drip, drip nature of this has just begun.
I research scandals. As part of my own due diligence on the Democrats running, I have looked into their purported "scandals". The stuff on Edwards and Obama is carved out of smoke. So is most of the stuff the RW has thrown at HRC. This money from the Tan Family is different (IMHO). There could be a reasonable explanation, but I’ve done enough follow-up digging to know that the $10,000 is a problem.
Why?
Because of the way the Tan Family operates and the nature of the businesses they run.
So, let’s meet the Tan Family:
Tonight, far out in the Western Pacific, the ongoing abuse on a rogue US Territory continues. On the Mariana Islands, an active, brutal and harsh purge of long-time foreign contract workers is underway. The goal is to deport any workers who might be granted any rights and replace them with new workers, who will never be given rights. The local "powers-that-be" (or as I call them, the Pirates of Saipan) are pulling out all the stops to maintain their failed, corrupt and immoral economic system.
The target is watering down or defeating H.R. 3079 and S. 1634. These pieces of legislation are already weak-in-the-knees when it comes to ending the decades of abuse. Still, these Bills need to be passed. They will bring some log overdue justice.
And yet, over the weekend I heard that Democrats, YES, Democrats are working to remove provisions granting long-time CNMI workers rights and legal status. I’m told, and I hope it is wrong, that Congressman Abrercrombie (HI-01) will do the legislative dirty work.
With DeLay and Abramoff out of the way the Pirates of Saipan need pliable Democrats to continue the abuse and they are working hard to find them. To our shame, they may have found some.
And the Tan Family is very much involved. Their sock puppet, Benigno R. (Ben) Fitial is currently the Governor of the CNMI. He has been on the take so long, that he does their bidding as second nature (when a member of the Tan Family says "jump", Ben’s only answer is "how high"). And his administration is filled other long-time lackeys whose only qualification for office seems to be that they too worked for the Tan Family and seek to please their masters.
Back in the 1980s, the Tan Family latched onto the CNMI like the global parasites they are. In no time they exploited loopholes in the Covenant (an agreement between the people of the Marianas Island and the USA that converted the former Trust Territory into a US Territory). The agreement made the people of the CNMI US Citizens and allowed them to import goods "duty-free" to the mainland USA.
It was a good idea. The CNMI economy was poor, underdeveloped and isolated. The open access to the mainland market was designed to create economic development and financial security for this new member of the American family. A steady, measured and sustainable growth curve was envisioned, but a mistake was made.
Immigration, custom and foreign investment laws were left to local control. These loopholes were easily exploited by the Tan Family who swooped into the CNMI and quickly bought off Legislators like Ben Fitial. He pushed through laws that opened the CNMI to foreign investors and created the system of easy to exploit guest workers. By the late 1980s Fitial left the CNMI government and spent the next ten years getting rich by stealing the labor of thousands.
As the 1990s began the CNMI guest worker system was out of control. Folks on welfare had their own Filipino maids and gardeners to work, beat and abuse. Sweatshops and brothels sprang up like toxic mushrooms and within a decade, a tropic paradise was converted into a cesspool of globalization gone terribly wrong.
In 1992, the Tan Family received the largest fine in US Labor Department history, $9 million, for their sweatshops—and it came from the Bush I Administration. The Family’s sweatshops were fined another $1.3 million for other violations (Sweating it out in Saipan is a good overview of the company from the Hong Kong Standard).
The family had origins in Hong Kong and mainland China. They spent time on the Philippines and Guam. By the early 1980s they were part of a vanguard of global Chinese entrepreneurs reconnecting with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s declaration that "To be rich is glorious."
Since the early 1980s the Tan Family has been learning the global textile trade and how a modern supply chain works. For tens of thousands of Americans who used to work in textile mills, the story of the Tan Family is the story of how they lost their jobs and how Politicians and lobbyists in Washington ensure that their tax dollars helped fund the movement of their industry offshore.
The CNMI, Guam and the Philippines formed the base of the early Tan Family operations. In the 1980s they learned how to game the American system. Their factories and shipping operations on the Philippines and the CNMI were subsidized by US Tax payers. In the early years they had a growth model based on maximum exploitation of their workers. It is still part of their corporate DNA, but nowadays they have learn to hide it—just like Ralph Lauren and most of your name-brand American clothing companies.
Tonight, the Tan Family's holdings are far more than a few sweatshops on the shores of some far flung place that most Americans could not find on a map with step-by-step directions.
Today the Tan Family owns and runs a modern multi-national corporation doing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business across dozens of market sectors, ranging from clothes to Tuna to Insurance to travel to shipping to hotels and many others. They still are a presence on the CNMI, but more and more the Family is looking East—to home—to China.
It is quite likely that the shoes on your feet were made in China. It is also likely that they were made by Luen Thai Footwear in Quanzhou.
Or if you had fish recently, especially tuna, it is quite possible that it was caught by the massive long-line fishing fleets of Luen Thai Fishing Ventures, also operating out of China's Fujian province.
Then there is their publicly traded company on the Hong Kong Stock exchange, Luen Thai (they more than likely made some of the clothes in your wardrobe—especially if your clothes include Polo Ralph Lauren, Liz Claiborne or anything from Dillards).
They own many other companies and holdings through Luen Thai Enterprises and the Tan Holding Corporation. Follow the links, take a look: it is an extremely diverse and connected multi-National Corporation. I once read an interview with a family member who stated that their goal was to be the GE of Asia. I think they are well on their way both morally and financially.
Adding to this pile, are hundreds of other companies and businesses they own through a seemingly endless series of partnerships, front companies and unreported agreements.
The Tan Family is in the Supply Chain Business.
They see the future more the movement of things than the manufacture of things. To that end they help name brand retailers (and anybody else) get finished goods on the shelves in a manner that pushes costs down the supply chain. They have built a business model based on the race to the bottom. And they have built—into their business plan—greenwashing and deniability for their clients and themselves. Unlike their start-up days on Saipan, they know how to keep several front companies between them and the worst factories and practices in their supply chain. They have adopted the rhetoric of socially responsible corporations, but they are all talk and no walk. A trip to their promo materials portrays a company that really cares about all their workers. It is deceptive green washing on a massive scale.
Some may remember a Diary of mine from earlier this year about Buddi Lal Dhimal, a Nepalese Guest Worker on the CNMI so desperate by the culture of abuse that he set himself on fire in protest:
Yep, he was a Tan Family employee that the company condemned to the Kafkaesque Hell of the CNMI labor system. There are hundreds of other examples. Their active abuse of workers on the CNMI is ongoing. Currently the Tan Family are party to a number of lawsuits including one from the George W. Bush EEOC, and you can imagine how bad something has to be to force any action from Bush World. (You can review some of these case by downloading the PDFs here).
Probing the corporate reports, lawsuits, web sites and paper trail of the Tan Family reveals a massive operation. One Tan Family company, CTSI Logistics moves freight over air and sea. They fly or ship daily into at least five locations around the USA and then move the goods by truck. Their daily flights into airports from New York to Ohio to Los Angeles might start in any number of counties around the Pacific Rim. For those who worry about security, the US Government trusts the Tan Family to be completely in charge of what is checked and loaded onto these flights. That does not make me feel secure (and neither does this security report about the CNMI and Guam that Abramoff had the Bush Administration suppressed).
From Abramoff’s billing records for the CNMI government it was clear that the business of the Tan Family went way beyond the sweatshops of Saipan. In fact it was clear that the Tan Family viewed the CNMI as a temporary base of operations for their apparel business. By 1999 they were already planning the move to China as entry to the WTO approached and along with it, the lifting of Chinese textile quotas. [Republican support for China’s entry into the WTO was one of the items it seems the Family "bought" with their support of the GOP through Abramoff—DeLay’s turnaround on the issue was especially suspect.]
By 2005 the textile quotas came off and Chinese textile goods were flooding the global market. Temporary restrictions on Chinese textiles were put in place by the US Congress and the Bush Administration to limit the damage to the dwindling US garment industry. Somehow, textiles started on mainland China, but finished on Hong Kong were exempt from the new restrictions. This proved to be a financial benefit for Tan Family companies and their operations on Hong Kong. How that Hong Kong exemption made it into law and how it stayed in the law after the WTO quotas came off (and new restrictions were put on) back in 2005 would be an interesting study. I would guess that some Tan Family money made it to key players moving the legislation through the Republican controlled Congress and those drafting the regulations of the Bush Administration.
I could go on and on about the massive textile and supply chain business of the Tan Family and their deep, deep, deep ties to the PRC government and the Republican Party. Their reach is mind-boggling.
And then there is their Luen Thai Fishing Ventures which been reported to be one of the main suppliers of sushi grade tuna to Korea and Japan. The company has a fleet of flying refrigerators to move their catch to market and a fleet of long-line floating fishing factories to strip the oceans of marine life. When you read about the fishing fleets out of China over-fishing the Pacific and driving some species to extinction—think Tan Family. They are key players in this growing ecological crisis.
And imports of fish products from China to the USA have been growing in recent years. Allowing this growth is in the control of Congress and the executive branch. And then there are the flight routes required for getting fresh fish to market. Planes land daily in the NYC area and other markets. Many of these are Tan Family planes. Senators and Members of Congress sitting on subcommittees dealing with fisheries, shipping and/or aviation would have been in a position to help or hurt this trade. Over the last decade any legislation that helped the Tan Family expand the fishing business and move their catch to US and Asian markets would be worth a look for a quid pro quo.
There is a lot to report about the Tan Family and in this Diary I am only scratching the surface.
Willie Tan, is the best known member of the family due to his active role in the Abramoff scandal, promoting sweatshops and funding the GOP effort to establish one-party rule to the tune of over $13.5 million dollars. He was recently named, for the second year in a row, one of Pacific Magazine’s Top Ten most Powerful people in the Pacific region:
It has been a tough year for Willie Tan, the chief executive officer of one of the largest locally-based business enterprises in the Pacific. His Tan Holdings empire, which stretches from China to the U.S. West Coast, and as far south as American Samoa, is going through an expected if painful realignment of focus.
The former cornerstone of the Tan Holdings was its Saipan-based garment factory, one of the largest, which was established in the early 1980s. [snip]
But the future of Saipan’s garment industry was clear more than two years ago when World Trade Organization rules were being rewritten to remove most of the duty benefits of assembling apparel on the island. Indeed, Willie Tan and his fellow company executives were already envisioning a future without a garment factory on Saipan more than two years ago. Thus it was no surprise when Tan Holdings announced late last year that it would shutter its huge Saipan factory in February. The only surprise came when workers, most from China, raised a stink and marched to Tan’s Fiesta Resort to protest the closing.
The march was ironic in that the garment workers were implicitly acknowledging that Tan Holdings was already looking to other industries – primarily tourism-focused – to grow the company. Other strong segments of the Tan Holdings empire include fishing, air and sea freight, logistics, and real estate. [snip]
Willie Tan, the consummate entrepreneur, isn’t waiting for times to get better on Saipan. He’s been expanding his regional fishing efforts, and now has major fleets in the Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia, and has established a fisheries foothold in the Hawaii market. He has been making a concerted effort to expand his presence in the Marshalls in other areas. He’s now providing air freight service to American Samoa, which has opened the door to expanded services into the South Pacific.
Travel is another Tan Family business. They make a profit off of almost every flight into the CNMI, especially those from China, which may explain why they kept recruiting new workers for their CNMI Garment factories long after they had made the decision to close them. And according to the Asia Times the CNMI is a frequent stop for Chinese citizens trying to enter the USA through the back door. Of course the Tan Family gets a cut of the $35,000-$40,000 it costs to make the trip from Fujian to NYC. Human trafficking is yet another profit center for their growing global business operations—and they can book that profit through a system with layers upon layers of deniability for any "illegalities".
And perhaps it is the new fishing venture on Hawaii that is part of the payoff for Rep. Abercrombie to sell out the CNMI Guest Workers and continuing the decades old practice of denying them any rights, justice and even basic human decency.
For me, the involvement of Democrats with the Tan Family is a new, and sad, development. Sure $10,000 compared to $13 plus million is small, but perhaps there is more. When it came to researching the Republicans, any reported donation from the Tan Family was a red flag that one should look for the hidden cash. If they follow the same MO with Democrats, it means that there is more money waiting to be found and connected back to the Tan Family. That could drive several news cycles.
For example, the Tan Family’s head of their US operations, Luen Thai USA (aka TellaS) is a fellow named Richard Helfenbein. Along with his family, he has added another $16,000 of Tan Family money to HRC’s campaigns. He is also a neighbor of hers in Chappaqua, NY.
Then there is last weekend’s LA Times story about donations to Senator Clinton from NYC’s Chinatown. It provided another possible link. While there were some flaws in the report, the connection to Fujian province raised another red flag. This is a long-time base of operation for the Tan Family. Their shoe factories and fishing fleetsare rooted in China's Fujian province (they also have other key business operations in neighboring provinces and nearby Hong Kong). For years, the Family has been a player in the power structure of Fujian province. And yes, family patriarch Tan Sui Lin and Willie Tan are among the senior family members who have donated to both HRC and George W. Bush.
Why is this money important to her? I do not understand.
Why is Senator Clinton hanging onto the $10,000 from the Tan Family (or $26,000 if you include Helfenbein)?
The known total of Tan Family money she has recieved is a tiny fraction of the known total given to Republicans, but a lazy press corps will morph it into equivalent amounts. More than that, this story will add onto the Norman Hsu and LA Times story and the Clinton/China meme (even as evidence of the GOP/China connection is all but ignored). The fact that the Tan Family may have moved millions from the PRC to the GOP will be obscured because HRC refuses to deal with this small pile of tainted funds. I do not understand why she chooses to protect the GOP from the Culture of Corruption by hanging onto this insignificant bundle of dirty, filthy money.
She could easily neutralize this story by taking a lead to end the abuse on the CNMI.
Here is what she could do:
- Returns the $26,000 of Tan connected money to the donors.
- Donate an additional $26,000 to the Dekada Movement an organization formed by the CNMI workers to fight for Justice on the rogue US Territory.
- Make time to meet personally with human rights worker Wendy Doromal who was on the CNMI this summer can briefed the Senator, her staff and Campaign on the current conditions facing foreign contract workers on the CNMI.
- Support CNMI reform legislation (S. 1634 and H.R. 3079) and get it passed this year.
These four actions would redeem Hillary Clinton on this story.
There is more that she could do as well. She could lead on ending the growth of neo-slavery enabled by Guest Worker schemes around the globe. She could take a firm stand to end the easy human trafficking flourishing on the CNMI and elsewhere in the wake of a steady stream of migrating workers. And she could come out in support of real ethics and lobbying reform (but now I’m just dreaming).
As long as she holds onto this small pile of tainted cash she weakens our ability to use the "Culture of Corruption" meme against Republicans in 2008. The everybody does it shield she gives them is a powerful tool to deflect scandal. In the interest of "balance" the traditional media will treat her $26,000 as being equivalent to the GOP’s $13,250,000.
This money is bad.
Any dollar from the Tan Family is corrupt. It does not matter if it is $10,000, $26,000 or $13 million. None of it is good.
I’m glad other campaigns are talking about where our candidates are raising money in this in the Primary. I’m glad to see them challenge tainted donations. We need more of it.
This needs to be fully vetted and be done out in the open. If at the end of the process, HRC becomes the nominee, she will have my vote and support—but we should be able to examine this issue without auto-attacks on the messengers.
That said, I fully expect the auto-attacks and flames from HRC supporters and the Pirates of Saipan to begin almost instantly.
So it goes...
Cheers