News: September 2007 Archives
By David Barboza and Duff Wilson | The New York Times
28 September 2007
The chief executive of a leading Chinese pharmaceutical company used e-mail aliases, offshore bank accounts and a network of drug traffickers to illegally distribute millions of dollars worth of human growth hormone in the United States, federal officials said in a criminal complaint, provided to The New York Times on Wednesday.
A 62-page affidavit by a special agent of the Food and Drug Administration details an extraordinary level of personal involvement in the trafficking and sale of the powerful hormones by Jin Lei, the founder and chief executive of the GeneScience Pharmaceuticals Company, one of China's largest drug makers, based here in Changchun, in northern China.
The affidavit adds intriguing details and a rare look inside a major drug ring and the alleged role of a renowned businessman. It was unsealed Monday, but was not included in an online F.D.A. database until The Times requested and received a copy.
As early as 2004, according to investigators, Mr. Jin was smuggling Jintropin, a growth hormone he named after himself, to the United States.
American investigators claim that through the use of various aliases, including Jack Edwards, John and Luis, Mr. Jin made deals with middlemen and distributors outside China and also instructed them to wire money to banks in the United States, Panama and China.
GeneScience even sold an insurance program offering to resend any package seized by customs officials, the government says. Investigators also say some of the GeneScience Jintropin drug shipments were labeled as toys, glassware or hair treatment.
In January 2006, a person the F.D.A. has now identified as Mr. Jin using an alias wrote to an American customer, warning, "US custom is tighten control, you should stop email directly to gensci anymore and delete all your records."
A secretary who works for Mr. Jin, 42, said this week that he was not available for an interview, but colleagues and people who know him say they were surprised that the respected scientist and hard-charging entrepreneur would be caught up in a drug scandal.
"I contacted Jin Lei this morning. He's not sure about the whole thing and can't say anything to the media now," said Zhou Weiqun, board secretary of GeneScience's parent company, Changchun High Tech Group. "We're trying to figure out the situation. But we trust Jin Lei. He has done a lot for our company."
The charges against Mr. Jin and GeneScience were part of the largest crackdown in United States history on international trafficking in steroids and other illicit bodybuilding drugs.
On Monday, federal authorities said they had arrested 124 people and shut down dozens of crude drug-producing laboratories in a case the authorities called Operation Raw Deal.
Federal authorities did not release the names of athletes or others who might have been customers of the underground drug makers, but federal investigators said they had collected thousands of names and were combing through the database.
Officials from the F.D.A., Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration and several other federal agencies, said China was the primary supplier of the illegal drugs and that 37 Chinese companies, mostly chemical wholesalers, were involved in the illegal drug smuggling, much of it arranged over the Internet.
The revelations come at a difficult time for Chinese authorities. China is already facing mounting pressure to improve the safety and quality of its food, toys and other exports after a series of consumer product safety scandals this year.
With Beijing set to play host to the 2008 Olympic Games, China is also being asked to deliver a drug-free Olympics -- at a time when baseball, cycling and other sports have been damaged by doping scandals.
By Duff Wilson and Michael S. Schmidt | International Herald Tribune
25 September 2007
The federal authorities in the United States have announced the exposure of a sprawling underground distribution network for steroids, human growth hormone and other illicit bodybuilding drugs supplied by 37 companies in China.
The operation, disclosed on Monday, revealed a much wider, more diffuse commerce in performance-enhancing drugs than previously known, with a latticework of bathroom and basement manufacturers and distributors. That contrasted with the more centralized drug network from past years that tapped into established pharmaceutical pipelines.
A network of Internet-based chemical wholesalers, anonymous e-mail services and password-protected chat rooms fueled the trade, federal and state officials said. "There is no kingpin here," said Steve Robertson, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington. "We're going after individual distribution cells. There's no godfather of steroids."
The drug agency estimates that 99 percent of the illegal steroids originate with chemicals from China.
Most of the 124 who were arrested in the operation - including 50 over the past week - were charged with distributing chemicals bought in bulk from China, which as host of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing has been under pressure to deliver a drug-free Games.
By Keith Bradsher | The New York Times
26 September 2007
Eight boys ages 14 and 15 have been detained in the Tibetan town of Xiahe since Sept. 7 for writing graffiti and distributing pamphlets praising the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader, and for calling for independence from China, according to Human Rights in China, which called for their release. The state-controlled news media have been silent on the case, and a man answering the phone at the Xiahe public security office said he had no information.
By Robert J. Saiget - AFP - via (uncensored) Yahoo! News
September 25, 2007
China on Tuesday said that a meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Dalai Lama had damaged ties between the two nations, and called for Berlin to quickly fix the problem.
"This not only grossly interferes with the internal affairs of China, it hurts the feelings of the Chinese people and seriously undermines China-Germany relations," foreign ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said when asked about Sunday's meeting.
"We request that Germany... take concrete and effective measures to eliminate the negative impact made by this mistaken move so as not to bring any unnecessary damage to China-Germany relations."
Defying harsh warnings from China, Merkel held a historic meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader in Berlin on Sunday, during which she gave support to the Dalai Lama's quest for greater cultural autonomy for his homeland.
In an apparent response, China cancelled two top-level bilateral meetings, one a standing breakfast between the countries' foreign ministers on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly in New York.
By BBC News
September 23, 2007
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to meet the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, on Sunday in talks that have angered China.
Chinese officials have cancelled planned talks with German counterparts in Munich on legal and patent issues.
Germany says the meeting with the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising, is a private exchange.
But China, which governs Tibet, says the meeting is part of the Dalai Lama's agenda for Tibetan independence.
'Conscious' decision
Sunday's meeting will be the first time the Dalai Lama has been received at the chancellery.
China has already summoned the German ambassador in Beijing to complain.
However, German deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg said: "The meeting will take place, the invitation stands, and the chancellor also extended the invitation very consciously."
The German justice ministry said the legal talks had been cancelled for "technical reasons".
The Dalai Lama told the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung that Beijing was showing the "arrogance of power".
"Wherever I go, China protests. The Chinese are simply testing how far they can go," the Nobel Peace Prize winner said.
By The Times of India
September 22, 2007
Will the India-US nuclear deal go through? China isn't taking any chances. Indeed, even as debate rages on within India, China is busy soaking up global uranium supplies.
If the agreement allows India to go in for unfettered nuclear trade, it is expected to push up prices of the already expensive metal. But, China is busy securing supplies of uranium, beefing up its systems, buying more plants. On Thursday, China asked the US to help it work out its nuclear power standards, which guide nuclear power actions and safety. Untroubled by considerations of kowtowing to the US, Chinese vice premier Zeng Peiyan said, "Introduction of US nuclear power standards into China will play an important role in China's nuclear power construction."
Having wrapped up a uranium supply deal with Australia a week ago, China is now setting its sights on pretty much all the big uranium suppliers. China's official target for nuclear power capacity is 40 GWe by 2020 and another 18 GWe in the following five-year plan at a cost of $50 billion. Quite unknown to CPM leader Prakash Karat, there is a global nuclear renaissance in the making.
Of course, the first place to scout for the mineral -- whose spot price was until recently $130 per lb -- would be Africa, which holds 18% of the world's deposits, a tad behind Australia, but more than Kazakhstan.
China has zeroed in on Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Africa, Namibia, Niger, Kazakhstan and Canada as it looks for fuel for existing and new reactors. China's tactics are familiar: for instance, it is paying for modernisation of DRC's infrastructure and recently signed an agreement to build a major highway, a railway, 31 hospitals, 145 health centres and two universities there.
By Agence France-Presse
September 02, 2007
The head of the Taiwan-based Shin Kong Mitsukoshi department store chain's Beijing operation has been barred from leaving China over a management dispute, a report here said Saturday.
Steven Wu, general manager of Shin Kong Mitsukoshi's Beijing New Life Square, was escorted by Chinese police out off an airplane when he was planning to return to Taiwan last Sunday, the United Daily News said.
The paper said Wu has been barred by Chinese authorities from leaving Beijing.
It said Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, which invested 12 billion Taiwan dollars (363 million US) in the store, is trying to resolve a dispute over management issues with its mainland partner, Beijing Hualian Group.
The report cited sources as saying that the dispute erupted when Beijing Hualian Group suspected problems involving construction payments and doubted the Taiwanese company's management rights during a board meeting last week.
Beijing Hualian Group, which hopes that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi will "only be an investor," assigned some 200 security guards to "take over" the store launched in April and verbally fired all Taiwanese executives, it said.
Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, Taiwan's largest retailer, is appealing to relevant Chinese authorities over the dispute.
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