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From NewsMax:
A ship owned by a Chinese government-run company that currently operates two giant terminals at the Port of Long Beach, California was found 10 years ago to have been used to smuggle a huge cache of illegal weapons - with the smugglers saying they planned to import missiles that could "take out a 747."
On the night of March 18, 1996, undercover Customs and BATF agents discovered 2000 AK-47's in a container smuggled aboard the Empress Phoenix, a ship owned by the China Ocean Shipping Company [COSCO] docked at the Port of Oakland.
The guns were manufactured by another state-run company, Poly Technologies, the international outlet for Chinese weapons sales.
According to Vanity Fair magazine, which covered the episode in detail, the Empress Phoenix's gun cargo was earmarked for sale to deadly Los Angeles street gangs.
It was the largest seizure of fully operational automatic weapons in the history of U.S. law enforcement.
Unless COSCO is more involved with port security than the U.A.E. would be, this appears to disprove arguments that there would be no security risk in letting U.A.E. operate ports in the U.S.
