Obama opposes bill to rename Chinese Embassy address

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo

The Obama administration said that the president would veto legislation to rename the area in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington after a prominent Chinese political prisoner. State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that the bill proposed by Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, which has passed the Senate, would only complicate efforts to impress upon China the need to respect human rights and release Liu Xiaobo. Liu is a Nobel laureate serving an 11-year sentence on the conviction of inciting state subversion after calling for democratic reforms The proposal has already raised hackles in China, which said it violated fundamental principles of international relations.

US firm’s Chinese subsidiaries to pay USD14.5 million to resolve case

Chinese subsidiaries of a Massachusetts software company have agreed to pay more than USD14.5 million to resolve the federal government’s allegations that they illegally provided recreational travel to Chinese government officials. Federal prosecutors allege the Shanghai and Hong Kong divisions of Needham-based PTC Inc. violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Admissions made in resolution documents show the companies, through local business partners, arranged and paid for employees of Chinese state-owned enterprises to travel to the United States. The travel was supposedly for training in Massachusetts but in reality was for recreational travel to areas around the U.S. Prosecutors say the cost of the trips was routinely hidden within the price of PTC China’s software sales.

Spanish police raid Chinese bank in money laundering probe

Spain’s Civil Guard police are searching offices of China’s ICBC bank in downtown Madrid as part of a money laundering and tax fraud probe. A police statement said yesterday’s search of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was a follow-up on a police operation in 2015 that targeted gangs using the bank to launder to China some 40 million euros (USD45 million) proceeding from Chinese-run bargain stores across Spain. The statement said the operation was carried out in coordination with Spain’s anti-corruption prosecutors’ office. It said a judge in Parla, a town in the southern part of Madrid where many of the Chinese store wholesalers are located, had ordered the raid and placed a secrecy order on the investigations.