BGI Genomics—the Chinese Communist Party-linked genomics firm flagged by U.S. officials as “mining” the DNA of Americans—has collaborated extensively with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The National Pulse can reveal.

The company has recently come under fire following a 60 Minutes exposé on the company’s use of COVID-19 tests to “collect, store and exploit biometric information” on American citizens, according to former U.S. intelligence officials. What’s more, a recent Reuters article linked the firm to the Chinese Communist Party’s military.

In addition to the Obama administration enabling the firm to gain a foothold in the U.S., the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation played a critical role in BGI’s American expansion.

In September of 2012, the Microsoft founder’s foundation signed a “Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to form a collaboration on global health and agricultural development with the goal of achieving common objectives in health and agricultural development.”

The co-founder of BGI praised the agreement, celebrating the forthcoming “scientific breakthroughs in the areas of human, plant and animal genomics.” He also revealed that the collaborative efforts focused on sequencing genomes—the precise activity flagged for national security threats in the 60 Minutes segment:

“Having contributed to the Human Genome Project as well as sequencing the genomes of many critical plant and animal species and human diseases, including the initial sequencing of the rice genome as well as our involvement in the Rice 10,000 Genome Project, the 1,000 Plants and Animals Genome Project, the International 1,000 genomes project, the 1,000 Rare Diseases Project, the International Cancer Genome Project, Autism Genome 10K, among others, BGI looks forward to partnering with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in this significant collaboration to apply genomics research to benefit global human health.”