1/ Last week, the Czech Republic made international headlines for stopping a shipment of medical supplies that included boxes labelled as Chinese humanitarian aid to Italy. Together with @Aktualnecz, we have looked into the involved parties.
zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/confisc…
zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/confisc…
2/ On Mar 16, Czech police raided a warehouse in the northwestern Czech town of Lovosice. In there, the authorities have found 680 thousand face masks and 28 thousand respirators. Approximately 100 thousand masks were labelled as Chinese Red Cross aid to Italy. 
3/ The police confiscated the material since a Czech reseller tried to sell it to the Czech government for an excessive price in the time of crisis using that warehouse. The storage unit belongs to an influential united front figure - Zhou Lingjian.
4/ Zhou Lingjian who co-owns the company CTE CARGO Sped linked to CTE International who sold the 580 thousand masks to the Czech "shell" company, is in charge of the Czech Qingtian Hometown Association and runs the most prominent Chinese diaspora media Prague Chinese Times.
5/ His group has been at the forefront of a collection for Qingtian back in February, in total buying up 780 thousand face masks and 30 thousand respirators from Czech drug stores. This created suspicion that the material is actually from the local Chinese collection.
6/ Zhou claims it was imported from Hong Kong but stopped mid-way in CZ instead of going to Italy. The Italian embassy and Czech police claim the humanitarian aid was stolen by an organized group, leaving even more suspicion about why the boxes ended in Zhou's warehouse.
7/ Qingtian UFWD/OCAO also asked Zhou's group to send 50 tons of rice to Italian Qingtianese making the connection between Zhou and the Party organs clear. Similar to the rice shipment, even the boxes marked as humanitarian aid were actually intended for overseas Chinese in Italy
8/ This preferential treatment is violates the Red Cross principles. The Red Cross Society of China's honorary president Wang Qishan must be extremely unhappy about such an outrageous act.
9/ This incident leaves much doubt about the "aid" that is now coming from China to Europe. Especially since much of what is labelled as "aid" is either sales or directed at the overseas Chinese.
