Update: Thursday, 7:51 p.m. Fifth District Republican congressional nominee Bob Good is calling on his opponent to divest his family from a controversial Chinese company with a social media platform used to spy on American citizens.
Webb listed on his financial disclosure report that he owns up to $15,000 of shares in Tencent Holdings Limited, a Chinese company that owns WeChat, an app with more than 1 billion monthly users in China that researchers say has extended the global reach of China’s surveillance and censorship methods.
“It’s time for Webb to put his money where his mouth is,” Good said, “and actually put people over profits. Actively investing in what is effectively a wholly owned subsidiary of a totalitarian regime with no regard for civil liberties shows bad judgment at best. At worst, it gives the appearance that Webb supports Beijing Biden’s corrupt ties to the Chinese Communist Party.”
First report: Thursday, 3:02 p.m. Fifth District Democratic congressional nominee Dr. Cameron Webb is calling on his Republican opponent, Bob Good, to divest his holdings in two companies that did business with Campbell County when Good was a member of the Campbell County Board of Supervisors.
A press release from the Webb campaign highlighted two Campbell BOS votes dating back to 2016: one that approved $567,000 in local economic incentives to Abbott Laboratories, part of a $34 million proposed expansion of an Altavista Abbott facility that media reports at the time said would add 56 new local jobs, and a second giving McKesson, a drug distributor and health-care IT company, a contract overseeing the county’s ambulance billing and collection services, allowing the company to retain 4.25 percent of all that it collected.
Later that year, the BOS voted to hike ambulance fees 26 percent and to allow garnishing wages from Campbell County residents who did not pay for their ambulance rides.
The press release from the Webb campaign tied Abbott to Purdue Pharma, which has agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges to resolve a probe of its role in fuelling America’s opioid crisis.
Abbott marketed OxyContin on Purdue’s behalf.
“Too many individuals and families have faced unthinkable pain due to the opioid crisis. It is essential that our leaders stand up to those pharmaceutical companies that have recklessly endangered our communities in their pursuit of profit,” Webb said. “I will always stand up to these and other pharmaceutical companies to help ensure we end the opioid epidemic and address the unacceptably high cost of prescription medications. I call on my opponent to divest his financial ties to companies like Abbott and McKesson, so he can make the same pledge to the voters of Virginia’s Fifth District.”
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AFP
