>>3896652
moar from the Heavy article on Ugly Dick Blum, who is also Chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of California, check those swell academic duds
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Richard Blum’s Extensive Investments in China in the Late 1990s Prompted Questions About Possible Conflicts of Interest For His Wife
CHINA CHINA CHINA
Richard Blum’s vast array of financial assets included investments in China. In 1992, his interests in China were valued at less than $500,000. But according to a 1997 report in the Los Angeles Times, Blum’s investments significantly increased in the years after his wife became a senator.
In 1996, Blum reportedly invested $23 million into a steel company owned by the Chinese government. His firms also acquired assets in companies that produce soybean milk and candy, according to the LA Times report.
A 1997 article in the New York Times also reported that Blum’s private equity firm had investments with Shanghai Pacific, a company that produces items such as clean water pumps and firefighting pumps, and Golden China, a technology company that manufactures computer accessories.
Critics wondered if Beijing would try to use Richard Blum’s investments as a way to gain favor with Senator Feinstein. She has insisted that she was not influenced by her husband’s business dealings, telling the NY Times, “We have built a firewall. That firewall has stood us in good stead.”
In 1996, Senator Feinstein sat on the East Asian and Pacific Affairs subcommittee, which is part of the Foreign Relations Committee. Part of the subcommittee’s job was handling relations between the U.S. and China. Senator Feinstein had been an advocate for expanded trade with China, and was instrumental in making China a member of the World Trade Organization in 1999.
That same year, a spokesperson for the senator said that Blum had divested of his holdings in mainland China. But according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000, Newbridge Capital, a venture capital firm supported by Blum’s firm, continued to own stock in Chinese corporations worth millions of dollars.
The senator has come under new scrutiny more recently in relation to China. In 2013, the FBI discovered that a Chinese-American spy had been working in Senator Feinstein’s office since 1996, and had been reporting back to China’s Ministry of State Security. Feinstein said the staffer was immediately let go from her office after the FBI discovered who he really was, and insisted that the staffer had never had access to sensitive information.
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Richard Blum Launched a Foundation to Help Communities in Tibet and Used to Fly the Dalai Lama on his Private Jet
Richard Blum had a lifelong fascination with the Himalayan region. He shared in a 2003 interview that he developed a love of hiking as a child, when his family would explore the Sierra Nevada. Blum became interested in the Himalayas after he was given a subscription to National Geographic.
Blum got his wish in 1968, when he traveled to the region for the first time. He hiked the Kali Gandaki Valley in Nepal. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “The first night we stayed at a Tibetan refugee camp near Pokhara. Little children who’d walked barefoot across the Himalayas to get there would sit on my lap and smile and laugh. I was a goner.”
In 1981, Blum launched the American Himalayan Foundation. the organization operates dozens of schools, orphanages and other aid programs in Nepal. Workers also help operate Tibetan refugee camps and medical clinics. The same year the foundation launched, Blum also attempted to climb Mount Everest but his team was forced to turn back due to weather.
Richard Blum’s has reportedly tried to use his business connections to ease the relationship between China and Tibet. McClatchy Newspapers reported in 2008 that Blum had a personal relationship with the Dalai Lama; Blum even flew the religious leader on his private jet. Blum and Senator Feinstein also delivered letters from the Dalai Lama to China’s then-president, Jiang Zemin, during the 1990s, asking for a meeting. Blum said in an interview that the lack of progress was frustrating. “There is nothing in my life where I have spent more effort– flown, talked, attended meetings in Beijing and everywhere else, and had so little to show for it.”