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Inside Asia: Chinese Look Overseas for Surrogates

September 23, 2013 by

NEW YORK — Wealthy Chinese are hiring U.S. women to serve as surrogates for their children, creating a small but growing business in $120,000 “designer” American babies for China’s elite.

Surrogacy agencies in China and the United States are catering to wealthy Chinese who want babies outside the country’s restrictive family planning policies, who are unable to conceive themselves or who are seeking U.S. citizenship for their children.

The possibility of emigration is another draw — U.S. citizens may apply for green cards for their parents when they turn 21.

While there are no figures for the total number of Chinese who have sought or used U.S. surrogates, agencies in both countries say demand has risen rapidly in the past two years.

U.S. fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies are creating Chinese- language Web sites and hiring Mandarin speakers.

Circle Surrogacy, based in Boston, has handled half a dozen Chinese surrogacy cases over the past five years, said John Weltman, its president.

“I would be surprised if you called me back in four months and that number hadn’t doubled,” he said. “That’s the level of interest we’ve seen this year from China and the very serious conversations we’ve had with people who I think will be joining us in the next three or four months.”

The agency, which handles about 140 surrogacy cases a year, 65 percent of them for clients outside the United States, is opening an office in California to serve clients from Asia better. Mr. Weltman said he hoped to hire a representative in Shanghai next year.

The increased interest from Chinese parents has created some cultural tensions.

U.S. agency staff members who ask that surrogates and the prospective parents develop personal relationships have been surprised by potential Chinese clients who treat surrogacy as a strictly commercial transaction.

In China, where surrogacy is illegal, some clients keep secret the fact that their babies were born to surrogates, going so far as to fake pregnancies, agents say.

Chinese interest in obtaining U.S. citizenship is not new. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives anyone born in the United States the right to citizenship. A growing number of pregnant Chinese women travel to America to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children by delivering there, often staying in special homes designed to cater to their needs.

While the numbers are unclear, giving birth in the United States is now so commonplace that it was the subject of a hit romantic comedy movie, “Finding Mr Right,” released in China in March.

Over all, the number of Chinese visitors to the United States nearly doubled in recent years, from one million in 2010 to 1.8 million in 2012, U.S. immigration statistics show.

Mr. Weltman said that prospective Chinese clients almost always want U.S. citizenship for their babies. Other agencies pointed to a desire to have children educated in the United States.

Some wealthy Chinese say they want escape routes overseas because they fear they will be the targets of public or government anger if there is more social unrest in China. There is also a perception that their wealth will be better protected in countries with a stronger rule of law.

At least one Chinese agent promotes surrogacy as a cheaper alternative to the American EB-5 visa, which requires a minimum investment in a job-creating business of $500,000.

While the basic surrogacy package Chinese agencies offer costs between as much as $200,000, “if you add in plane tickets and other expenses, for only $300,000, you get two children and the entire family can emigrate to the U.S.,” said a Shanghai-based agent.

That cost still means the surrogacy alternative is available only to the wealthiest Chinese.

Prospective parents typically pay the surrogate between $22,000 and $30,000, an agency fee of $17,000 to $20,000 and legal fees as high as $13,000. If egg donation is required, that can cost an additional $15,000 and prenatal care and delivery fees can run between $9,000 and $16,000.

Indeed, surrogacy in the United States is so expensive that in recent years hundreds of American parents have reportedly turned to surrogates in India.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/business/global/chinese-look-overseas-for-surrogates.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Marc Rich, 78, Pardoned Financier, Dies in Switzerland

June 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Marc Rich’s connections to the rich and powerful not only made him fabulously wealthy but when he was indicted for fraud, racketeering and tax evasion on a grand scale, they helped secure him a pardon from Bill Clinton, hours before the U.S. president left office.

That triggered a political firestorm from critics who alleged Rich bought his pardon through donations that his ex-wife had made to the Democratic Party.

Rich died Wednesday of a stroke at a hospital in Lucerne, near his home for decades. He was 78, and his Israel-based spokesman Avner Azulay said he would be buried Thursday in a kibbutz in Israel.

Throughout his storied career at the pinnacle of high finance, Rich was known as a man who could deliver the big deals thanks to personal relationships he had forged with powerful figures around the world.

In a rare 1992 interview with NBC, Rich said that in his business, “we’re not political…That’s just the philosophy of our company.”

Yet Rich cultivated contacts with powerful politicians — in the Middle East as well as the United States — and used those ties to make billions, often when it seemed all doors were closed.

During the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, Rich used his Middle East contacts to purchase crude oil from Iran and Iraq and made a fortune selling it to American companies.

In 1981, Rich and a partner bought 20th Century Fox and three years later he sold his interest to Rupert Murdoch for $250 million.

But in 1983, while he was in Switzerland, Rich was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on more than 50 counts of fraud, racketeering, trading with Iran during the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis and evading more than $48 million in income taxes.

At the time it was the largest tax evasion case in U.S. history and could have earned him more than 300 years in prison.

Although the Swiss refused to arrest or extradite Rich, he stayed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, narrowly escaping capture in Finland, Germany, Britain and Jamaica, until Clinton granted him a pardon on Jan. 20, 2001 — the day he handed over the keys to the White House to George W. Bush.

Last-minute presidential pardons are not uncommon in the United States, but this one raised a furor. Critics believed the case showed that justice means one thing for ordinary people and another for powerful insiders.

Rich had other advocates, however.

For years influential Israelis, including ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the former chief of the Mossad spy agency, Shabtai Shavit, had been urging Clinton to pardon Rich, who over two decades had contributed up to $80 million to Israeli hospitals, museums, symphonies and to the absorption of immigrants.

Moreover, Federal Election Commission records showed that Rich’s ex-wife, songwriter Denise Rich, had donated $201,000 to the Democratic Party in 2000.

At the time, Rich’s lawyers were urging the U.S. to drop the tax evasion case. When the Justice Department refused to negotiate, Rich’s attorneys turned to Clinton.

Federal authorities investigated but found no evidence of wrongdoing. Election officials also dismissed a complaint accusing Denise Rich of donating campaign money and furniture to Hillary Clinton in exchange for the pardon.

Bill Clinton also denied any wrongdoing and said he acted on advice by prominent legal experts not connected to the trader.

Nevertheless, the current U.S. attorney general Eric Holder, who was deputy attorney general under Clinton, told a House committee weeks after the president’s decree that if he had known all the facts of the case, “I would not have recommended to the president that he grant the pardon.”

Rich was born in Antwerp, Belgium, on Dec. 18, 1934. His Jewish family fled from the Nazis to the United States, where he went to school and college in New York.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/06/26/world/europe/ap-eu-switzerland-obit-rich.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

President to Nominate Vice Chairman of F.D.I.C. to Lead It

June 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The announcement is the administration’s first effort since last year to address the growing number of vacancies atop the agencies that regulate the financial industry. The White House still must submit more than half a dozen names to the Senate to fill other vacant top-level positions.

Mr. Gruenberg, a Democrat, has served as the agency’s vice chairman since 2005. He would replace Sheila C. Bair, who completes a five-year term as chairwoman in July. She has guided the F.D.I.C. to greater prominence and power through fierce advocacy for consumers and community banks.

Republicans have forced the withdrawal of Mr. Obama’s two most recent nominations for regulatory positions, but Mr. Gruenberg is viewed as a likely candidate to break that blockade. He worked for years as a Democratic staff member on the banking committee, which will consider his nomination, and maintains good personal relationships with members of both parties.

Senator Tim Johnson, the South Dakota Democrat who is chairman of the committee, issued a statement applauding the nomination and promising swift action.

“I am confident that his intellect and years of experience in financial services, including distinguished service on the staff of the Senate Banking Committee, will make him an outstanding chairman,” said Mr. Johnson. “It is vital that we have strong leaders in place at our financial regulators as we continue the economic recovery.”

The office of the ranking Republican, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Gruenberg joined the F.D.I.C. after working for more than a decade as a senior counsel to former Senator Paul S. Sarbanes.

Mr. Gruenberg has since provided reliable support for Ms. Bair in her frequent clashes with other regulators, as the F.D.I.C. has pressed for increased consumer protections, stricter rules for large banks — and leniencies for the smaller state-chartered banks that the F.D.I.C. is charged with overseeing.

“Marty’s long tenure at the F.D.I.C. and significant expertise in financial services issues make him an outstanding selection for this position,” Ms. Bair said.

The White House still must fill three vacancies on the F.D.I.C.’s five-member board. Two of those seats are held by the heads of other regulatory agencies, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One is the vice chairman’s slot left open by Mr. Gruenberg.

Tradition dictates that the vice chairman not be a member of the president’s political party. Mr. Obama is considering a number of Republican candidates, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The White House also is considering the nomination of the F.D.I.C.’s other board member, Thomas J. Curry, to head the comptroller’s office, which regulates most of the nation’s large banks.

Mr. Curry, a political independent, is a former commissioner of banks in Massachusetts.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=977dc9ef9343673aae28fb02223068a9

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,