Tried behind closed doors in Shanghai for paying bribes and channeling money, the businessman’s absence became a mystery, though the court trial confirms he has been in the hands of the regime all along
After going missing for five years and being tried behind closed doors, tycoon Xiao Jianhua, one of the richest in China, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison and his company, the Tomorrow Group, has been fined 55,000 million yuan. 8,025 million euros). euros). After a shady lawsuit in which the charges were not brought to light, the Shanghai First Intermediate Court found him guilty of illegally appropriating his company’s funds and paying bribes.
“The criminal acts of Xiao Jianhua and the Tomorrow Group have seriously damaged the order of financial management, endangering national economic security and violating the professional integrity of officials,” the verdict concluded, according to the South China Morning Post newspaper. ‘. In addition to punishing his company, the judges imposed a personal fine of 6.5 million yuan (947,000 euros) on the magnate.
According to the ruling, Xiao and the Tomorrow Group diverted funds and assets from a bank they controlled, Baoshang, worth 148.6 billion yuan (21.683 million euros) between 2004 and 2018. Finally, the said bank was intervened by the government in May 2019 after it went bankrupt. Similarly, in July 2020, Chinese regulators expropriated another nine companies of the Tomorrow Group, including insurance companies and brokerage firms.
In addition to this embezzlement, the ruling states that Xiao Jianhua and his company gave government officials bribes worth 680 million yuan (99 million euros) between 2001 and 2021 to avoid tax audits. missing and presumably held in a secret place by the Chinese authorities.
Born 50 years ago to a poor rural family in Shandong province, Xiao Jianhua became one of the richest men in China by amassing €5.5 billion with his industrial group Tomorrow, which brought together everything from finance to insurance to real estate and mining.
But his star went out with the ‘crash’ that shook the Chinese stock market in the summer of 2015, when shares worth €4.6 billion volatilized and millions of retail investors lost their savings. What had hitherto been his main asset, his business contacts with high-ranking families of the regime, then became a dangerous political weapon.
While other tycoons and stock regulators were purged by the disaster, Xiao Jianhua took refuge in Hong Kong, where he lived in an apartment in the luxurious Four Seasons hotel, protected by a guard of female bodyguards in the Amazon. He was last seen there on January 27, 2017, getting into a car at 3 a.m. with two of his bodyguards who met them at the gates of their hotel. The next day, his wife reported his disappearance to the police, but later withdrew it.
Although his whereabouts have been a mystery ever since, it was clear that he was in the hands of the regime. As reported by the South China Morning Post newspaper, he was persuaded by authorities to cross over to mainland China and “assist” in two investigations: one on the stock market crash and another on corruption among senior party officials.
Something Xiao Jianhua might know a lot about, having been a partner of Vice President Zeng Qinghong’s son in the controversial takeover of state-owned Shandong Luneng, according to Caijing magazine. With a market value of 73,800 million yuan ($10,800 million), both bought the company for just $3,730 million ($546 million), but a spokesman for Xiao Jianhua assured in 2014 that the operation had been completely legal, the paper reported.
That same year, The New York Times also reported that the tycoon had done business with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s sister and brother-in-law. In response to the article, his business group acknowledged that he had bought a block of shares from them in 2013.
In early July it was announced that he was being tried, but not for the crimes for which he had been prosecuted. The hearing was held behind closed doors and was not even attended by diplomats from the embassy of Canada, a country for which Xiao Jianhua has a passport, along with another from China and an official passport from Antigua and Barbuda. Neither his passports, nor his millions, nor his alleged contacts with power saved him from the sentence, which has been lessened by his cooperation to “repair the damage”.
Source: La Verdad
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