New Jersey lawmakers are questioning the Turnpike Authority’s decision last year to grant an 11-year E-ZPass contract to a Singapore-based company, citing concerns over its potential links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Last September, the Turnpike Authority awarded an E-ZPass customer service operations contract to a Nashville-based company, TransCore, after accepting a bid of $1.73 billion.
TransCore is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd (ST Engineering), which is owned by Temasek Holdings, which is owned by Singapore’s government.
Conduent, an American company based in Newark, New Jersey, lost the contract, despite bidding lower at $1.48 billion.
What has raised alarms is that Fu Chengyu, a high-ranking CCP member with ties to China’s influence network, the United Front Work Department, was a member of Temasek’s board of directors until just recently.
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Joe Pennacchio, a Republican Senator from Morris County told the Epoch Times, “You have a foreign entity with a former member of the CCP who used to be on the board. So, I mean, that should be red flags.”
“So, that’s where we’re dependent on our own government to make sure that these deals that are going to happen are properly vetted, and they’ve gone through the proper circles of national defense, of Homeland Security, and … the Treasury Department, making sure that our financial secrets are kept secret, not shared with other people,” he added.
Pennacchio said that the EZ-Pass system collects a significant amount of personal information of travellers, and that information like driver’s license information, credit card numbers, and even banking information of private American citizens could end up in the hands of one of the nation’s greatest adversaries.
“We should have at least the Trump administration perhaps taking a second look and making sure that they’re comfortable… that these people won’t share that information, and that there are no Chinese military or Chinese government ties to this organization,” Pennacchio told the Epoch Times.
Widespread scrutiny
The deal is under widespread scrutiny, attracting attention from both sides of the political aisle.
Democrat, Rep. Josh Gotteimer, posted to X on Feb. 7, “China keeps trying to steal Americans’ data. Their newest target: Jersey families. @NJTurnpike toll booths are set to be owned by TransCore, with links to the Chinese Communist Party. We cannot allow our personal information and whereabouts to get into the hands of our number one adversary.”
Republican, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, issued a letter to the Turnpike Authority’s Board of Commissioners earlier in February, writing, “Handing over critical infrastructure operations to a company tied to China is reckless and unnecessary when American-based companies are fully capable of handling these services. The New Jersey Turnpike Authority must reconsider this contract immediately and put American interests first.”
In correspondence between Van Drew and TransCore, TransCore said that it “delivers the most secure toll systems” in the U.S. and that it has an existing agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice which ensures personal data cannot be shared with a foreign entity, including ST Engineering.
According to the Epoch Times, TransCore wrote, “There is no connection between TransCore, or its parent company ST Engineering (STE), with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)… Temasek, as a shareholder of STE, has no director appointed to the STE Board and has no role in STE’s business operations.”
Van Drew was not convinced, arguing that American authorities “should take a closer look at this contract and others like it to ensure we’re protecting American infrastructure from undue foreign influence.”
Legitimate concerns
Van Drew told the Epoch Times, “These types of corporate structures raise legitimate concerns that must be carefully examined, as we saw with TikTok. I believe that when taxpayer dollars are involved, especially in a $1.73 billion deal, we need to ensure there is absolutely no risk of foreign influence.”
Conduent, who had operated the contract for eight years prior to the TransCore bid, has filed a protest with the Turnpike Authority arguing there is “no justification” for awarding the contract to TransCore when it bid $251 million more than what Conduent had put on the table.
Former U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli, a Democrat from New Jersey, and a consultant for Conduent, told Fox News that awarding TransCore the contract and giving it access to America’s tolling system is “worse” than any threat TikTok poses.
“I don’t really understand why this hasn’t gotten a lot, frankly, a lot more attention. I would rather the Chinese knew what I was watching on TikTok than have the Chinese monitoring my car going up and down the New Jersey turnpike. I don’t really understand why people aren’t more upset about it.”
Opened in 1951, the New Jersey turnpike is one of the busiest highways in the United States and serves as a principal thoroughfare between major cities along the East Coast.
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