A Hawaii-based defense contractor with some shadowy fundraising ties to Sen. Susan Collins has been charged with bank fraud after receiving a $12.8 million loan from the Paycheck Protection Program, a policy that Collins had a role in designing.
Martin Kao, CEO of the Martin Defense Group, formerly called Navatek LLC, allegedly lied about the number of people employed by the company in its Bangor and Portland offices and personally pocketed $2 million of the fraudulently-obtained seven-figure loan.
This February a reporter for Honolulu Civil Beat identified Kao’s wife, Tiffany Lam, as the sole agent in a shell corporation that made a $150,000 donation to the 1820 PAC, a Republican fundraising committee that has spent over $6.8 million to re-elect Collins.
Lam and two Navatek executives also forked over an additional $5,600 each, the maximum annual contribution allowed by an individual, to Collins’ campaign in 2019.
That same year, Navatek was awarded an $8 million contract from the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research, which Collins said she helped secure.
“As a senior member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I strongly advocated for the funding that made this research possible and am so proud of the work Navatek and other Maine industries do to support our Navy and our nation’s defense,” Collins said standing beside Kao at a Portland press conference.
Collins has made the Paycheck Protection Program a centerpiece of her re-election campaign, touting her role authoring the program on the campaign trail.
In emails quoted in the criminal complaint filed against Kao, the Hawaiian businessman touted his relationship with “specified U.S. Senators from those states who had ‘championed’ the CARES Act, and he ‘expected to provide an update shortly to each of them.’”
“I just got off a couple calls with [a U.S. Senator and Member of Congress],” Kao wrote in another email. “The (sic) specifically asked about the status of our PPP loan application and were very adamant about stepping in, if our application was getting stalled.”
The U.S. Senate race is the most expensive in state history, and the campaign contributions Collins and Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon have reaped from big-money groups across the country have drawn criticism from grassroots groups on both sides of the political spectrum.
“Susan Collins loves to talk about integrity but as this report shows, her special-interest donors are getting access to millions in taxpayer-funded grants she promised were meant to aid Maine small businesses,” said Willy Ritch, executive director of 16 Counties Coalition. “She complains about ‘dark money’ and tells us ‘don’t believe the lies’ but she’s clearly benefiting from the dark money groups she refused to regulate when she voted against the DISCLOSE Act.”
Collins has already taken heat for enabling politically-connected, wealthy individuals and corporations to secure significant PPP payouts. Earlier this summer, she took credit for writing a loophole into the legislation that let large hospitality chains apply for loans based on their payroll in each branch, rather than the entire company.
Photo: Senator Collins stands with Navatek leadership before touring their Portland office last August. | Official photo
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Collins mega-donor arrested for defrauding PPP, bragged about connection to senator - mainebeacon.com
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