West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey
CHARLESTON – The West Virginia Investment Management Board has passed a resolution to ban investments in companies owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
The board voted May 29 on the resolution from Gov. Patrick Morrisey. The vote also lets the board begin a divestment plan from any currently owned investments in those companies.
“The Chinese Communist Party poses a threat to our national security, dodges transparency and legal oversight, and represents a financial risk that we cannot take,” Morrisey said in a press release. “With the passage of this resolution, the West Virginia Investment Management Board will not invest in CCP owned or controlled companies and seek to prudently divest of those investments.”
The investment board manages the assets of the Defined Benefit Plans for teachers, deputy sheriffs, public employees, State Police, Division of Public Safety and judges as well as the Workers’ Compensation Fund, the Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis Fund, the Wildlife Endowment Fund, several endowment funds, insurance plans and municipal plans.
State Treasurer Larry Park hailed the move.
“The board made the right choice today by adopting this new policy that will ensure that we do not put American dollars at risk and that state tax dollars are not used to bankroll a nation that is completely against our way of life,” Pack said. “We must do everything in our power to hold bad foreign actors accountable. This is another tool at our disposable to do just that.”
