Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey secured a significant legal victory on Friday, with a federal judge issuing a $24 billion judgment against the Chinese Communist Party after finding it liable for hoarding personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is a landmark victory for Missouri and the United States in the fight to hold China accountable for unleashing COVID-19 on the world,” the attorney general said in a statement.
In 2020, Missouri filed a lawsuit against the CCP, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and several other Chinese entities, accusing them of exacerbating the COVID-19 pandemic by interfering with the production, purchasing, and import/export of PPE.
The suit claimed that China had nationalized U.S. factories producing PPE and stockpiled protective equipment made or available for sale in the U.S.
“China’s campaign to hoard the global supply of PPE was performed in conjunction with its repeated misrepresentations on the existence, and then scope and human-to-human transmissibility of, the COVID-19 virus,” Missouri District Judge Stephen Limbaugh, Jr., wrote in his ruling. “Plaintiff has submitted into the record substantial evidence demonstrating as much.”
The judge concurred with Bailey’s argument that China had violated both state and federal anti-monopoly laws, resulting in Missouri suffering significant harm, including lost tax revenue and increased expenditures on PPE.
“During the early months of the pandemic, Missouri spent millions more on PPE than it otherwise would have because of Defendants’ hoarding,” Limbaugh wrote.
Missouri claimed it had to spend more than $122 million extra on PPE due to the hoarding and that the state had lost over $8 billion in tax revenue.
“China refused to show up to court, but that doesn’t mean they get away with causing untold suffering and economic devastation,” Bailey said. “We intend to collect every penny by seizing Chinese-owned assets, including Missouri farmland.”
The attorney general stated that, if necessary, Missouri would collaborate with the Trump administration to “identify and seize Chinese-owned assets” to ensure the state collects on the record-setting $24 billion judgment.
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