International
Don Junior, son of President Donald Trump, accused Danone of trying to acquire an American company on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. The French group rejected the statements.
Donald Trump Jr. The day of his father’s speech, US President Donald Trump, before a joint session of Congress in the House of Representatives. (Free Press Photo: AFP)
Don Junior, son of US President Donald Trump, accused the agri -food giant Danone of acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (PCC) when trying to acquire the American company Lifeway, a statement that was denied this Friday by the French group.
At the end of March, Don Junior held the French group in its podcast Triggered to act “at least partly under the implicit direction – or perhaps explicit – of the PCC.”
The company, he added, tried to “orchestrate a hostile operation of control of the company Lifeway, based in the middle of the United States and specialized in health -related foods.”
“For more than 25 years, Danone is a minority shareholder of Lifeway Foods. Several weeks ago, Danone made a proposition to acquire 75% of the remaining actions, an offer that was rejected by Lifeway,” said the group in a statement transmitted to the AFP after a publication in the French economic newspaper Echos.
The newspaper, which qualifies the case of a “mess” worthy of “a spy novel,” says that the general director of Lifeway, Julie Smolyansky, “stubbornly rejects the sale and does everything to prevent it, to the point of being criticized by her own family.”
“Danone regrets the erroneous and deceptive versions disseminated in social networks about this operation. It is false to pretend that the interest of our American subsidiary in Lifeway Foods is related to the Chinese Communist Party,” says the firm, which employs 5,000 people in the United States, where it has 13 production sites.
In his podcast, the son of the US president accuses China “of using foreign companies (…) as substitutes to do their dirty businesses in US territory.”
Danone affirmed to the AFP that there is no ongoing investigation against the company in the United States.