Curtis Bashaw, the New Jersey Never Trump Republican, once partnered with a Chinese state-owned construction company that has been accused of corruption and “cyber espionage.”
Bashaw hopes to secure the Garden State Republican nomination against Trump-endorsed Mendham Mayor Christine Serano Glassner.
“She’s a fantastic woman…I’m giving her my complete and total endorsement, Trump said last week at a rally in Cape May, New Jersey. “They said her (opponent) is a Christie person, so I said I’m endorsing you immediately,” referring to Bashaw.
Along with being a key Chris Christie ally, Bashaw worked with Chinese state-owned construction company, the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), that has been accused of corruption and has strong ties to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
In 2017, Cape Advisors, which was co-managed by Bashaw, partnered with the investment arm of China Construction America for a $140 million equity investment in a residential development in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan.”
Cape Advisors at the time declared the deal “one of its major focuses over the past two years.” Strategic Capital, which is the investment arm of China Construction America, co-developed the property with Cape Advisors.
China Construction America is a subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering Corporation, which is the largest engineering and construction company in the world by revenue.
“CCA is a wholly owned subsidiary of China Construction Engineering—famous for the Water Cube at the Beijing Olympics. Although its parent company is publicly traded on the Shanghai stock exchange, the majority of the shares are still owned by the Chinese government—a holdover from the days when the government controlled every company,” CNBC noted.
The Chinese state-owned construction company, which Bashaw worked with, has had a history of controversy.
The Chinese state-owned construction company Bashaw worked in 2019 was blacklisted by the World Bank “due to its involvement in collusive practices and corruption scandals in the Philippines concerning the Philippines National Roads Improvement and Management Program.”
“Beijing had bugged African Union HQ built by the CSCEC in Ethiopia and for five years, data from CPUs in the PRC-constructed building had been transferred to Chinese servers. In early 2022, a lawsuit was filed in a Kenyan court against the CSCEC due to corruption allegations. The court was requested to debar the company from continuing working in Kenya and violating Kenya’s laws and directives,” a watchdog group found.
The U.S. Department of Defense found that the CSCEC has close ties with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump banned Americans from investing in 31 Chinese companies that were listed as enabling the PLA, including the Chinese State Construction company. The Trump administration even accused CSCEC of “cyber espionage.”
Bashaw said he divested from his firm in 2019, one-year before then-President Trump banned Americans from owning stock in the company that has close ties to the PLA.
In February, Jeanette Hoffman, a spokesperson for Bashaw’s campaign, said that Bashaw made “zero dollars on this New York City Project,” and accused Serrano-Glassner of “spreading wild conspiracies.”
Along with his ties to Chinese state affiliated companies, Bashaw shared an article that Trump is a “powerful ally” in the “forces of illiberalism.”
In contrast to Bashaw, Serrano Glassner said that she would advance Trump’s America First agenda if elected to the Senate.
“I gratefully accept President Trump’s endorsement, and I look forward to serving as his steadfast ally in Washington and working hand-in-hand with him to Drain the Swamp and Make America Great Again,” Serano Glassner said.
She added, “New Jersey deserves better than the corrupt political establishment that gave us ‘Gold Bar Bob’ Menendez, and America deserves better than the unmitigated disaster of the Biden regime.”