That’s the assessment of the Paycheck Protection Program by Frank Knapp, CEO of the SC Small Business Chamber of Commerce.

“Let us hope that this round of small-business loans turns out to be fairer than the first round that lasted less than 2 weeks before the money ran out,” Knapp said.

According to the Washington Center for Equitable Growth:

• “Just 4% of the loans made accounted for nearly 45% of the money available.

• 0.03% of the loans made having been for more than $5 million – 9% of all the money.

• The construction industry received more than 13% despite representing only 4% of nonfarm payroll job losses.

• Retail and hospitality represented 65% of job losses but received only 9% of the loans.

Bloomberg reports how this unfairly played out for JPMorgan Chase & Co.:

• More than 300,000 small business customers of JPMorgan applied for loans.

• About 18,000 of loans – a 6% success rate.

• By comparison, about 5,500 larger customers got loans.

• JPMorgan made $14 billion in small-business loans to big businesses.

Multi-millionaire hotelier Monty Bennett obtained $96.1 million.

Billionaire Trevor Milton got $4 million for his com pany, Nikola Motor Co.

The Los Angeles Lakers basketball team got more than $4 million but returned it.

Kiawah Island Community Association near Charleston obtained $1 million.

“These revelations are scandalous,” Knapp said.

“It shows a fraud perpetrated on the majority of small businesses that unsuccessfully tried to get loans to survive.

“The process was set up for most of them to fail.”

Unfortunately, Congress did not listen to critics who said the guidelines didn’t guarantee “first come, first served” as promised.

Private lenders are still allowed to discriminate, Knapp said.

They are legally free to process applications of only existing customers and favor applications based on loan amounts.