US probes Chinese ownership of CIA-linked insurance company

Insurance company Wright USA had become a financial lifeline for CIA and other officials who found themselves under investigation. When it was quietly acquired by a Chinese firm, the FBI launched a criminal probe into whether its ownership gives Chinese spy agencies a pipeline into the personal information of thousands of American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

The company, Wright USA, was quietly acquired late last year by Fosun Group, a Shanghai-based conglomerate led by Guo Guangchang, a billionaire known as “China’s Warren Buffett” who has high-level Communist Party connections.

The links between Guo and Wright USA came under scrutiny by the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, as well as the Office of Director of National Intelligence, the coordinating body of all U.S. spy agencies, soon after Fosun announced the purchase of Wright’s parent company last November. The FBI has also launched a criminal probe into whether the company made “unauthorized disclosures of government data to outsiders,” according to a well-placed source, who like others, spoke to Newsweek on condition of anonymity because the information was sensitive.

U.S. officials are concerned that the deal gave Chinese spy agencies a pipeline into the names, job titles, addresses and phone numbers of tens of thousands of American intelligence and counterterrorism officials—many working undercover—going back decades.

On Tuesday, perhaps in response to U.S. government concerns, Fosun announced it was putting Wright USA’s parent company, Bermuda-based Ironshore Insurance, up for sale. Fosun spent $2.3 billion over two years acquiring the company, Reuters reported. No timing for a sale was announced.