Lack of Disclosures Raises Questions About Who Controls Chinese Conglomerate
For example, two of HNA’s senior executives in the United States — Daniel Chen, the son of Chen Feng, HNA’s co-chairman, and Chen Guoqing, the younger brother of
that same co-chairman — say they have worked simultaneously for HNA and PAC, as vice chairman and chief executive, according to online biographical sketches.
And in two different court cases involving HNA’s subsidiary, Hainan Airlines, company executives and longtime business partners have acknowledged, under oath,
that PAC was at one time an affiliate of HNA or its subsidiary, Hainan Airlines.
Even before George Soros, a billionaire, made a large investment in Hainan Airlines, Chen Guoqing moved to the United States to set up the Pacific
American Corporation (originally called Hainan American) to help the fledgling Chinese airline buy engines and spare parts in the overseas market.
And if a company sets up a structure to obscure this, it’s an even bigger red flag.”
At PAC, one of the top executives is Chen Guoqing, 61, the younger brother of HNA’s co-chairman, Chen Feng.
And as Hainan Airlines grew from a state-backed airline into a sprawling conglomerate, with airports, hotels, shipping
and logistics services, PAC began venturing into other businesses, including managing corporate jets, investing with HNA in a Chinese leasing company and selling a European hotel chain to HNA, according to regulatory filings in China and Singapore.
“Hainan Airlines is an affiliate of Pacific American Corporation,” Zhu Yimin, the chief executive of Hainan
Airlines said in a 2004 statement submitted in a bankruptcy case, Dornier Aviation v. Hainan Airlines.
In the early 1990s, around the time the older Mr. Chen was setting up Hainan Airlines as a joint stock company, his younger brother began registering a series of companies in Beijing
and Hainan Province that would soon do business with the airline.
