By Karen Freifeld and Kanishka Singh
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Morgan Stanley’s underwriting of Zijin Gold International’s Hong Kong IPO placed it and its U.S. investors at risk of regulatory, financial and reputational harm, a U.S. House of Representatives committee told the bank on Thursday.
Zijin Gold is a subsidiary of Zijin Mining Group, a global mining company based in China that is on a U.S. government list of companies whose imports are banned over alleged human rights abuses involving Uyghurs.
In September, Morgan Stanley assisted with Zijin Gold’s IPO to help its parent company raise funds by selling its non-Chinese gold mining assets and listing them on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the House’s select committee on China said. That raised questions of whether it helped Zijin Mining evade the U.S. prohibitions, according to the committee.
Morgan Stanley declined to comment. Zijin Gold and Zijin Mining did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“When U.S. financial institutions engage with Chinese firms linked to Uyghur forced labor, they undermine the U.S. government’s goal of deterring forced labor globally,” Representative John Moolenaar, the committee’s chair, wrote in a letter to Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick.
In January, Zijin Mining was added to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, which restricts imports tied to what the U.S. says is an ongoing genocide of minorities in China’s western Xinjiang region.
U.S. officials say Chinese authorities have established labor camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. Beijing denies any abuses.
In the letter, Moolenaar seeks documents and communications about Morgan Stanley’s involvement in the public offering related to the company’s links to the Chinese government, Chinese Communist Party, military, and human rights abuses. He asked for the information by November 27.
The letter is the latest action by his committee on U.S. financial institutions’ involvement in underwriting IPOs of Chinese companies with ties to the Chinese military or to illegal labor practices.
In July, the committee subpoenaed documents from JPMorgan and Bank of America over their roles in underwriting the Hong Kong IPO of China’s CATL, the world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker. CATL has been designated a Chinese military company by the U.S. Department of Defense.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Jamie Freed)
