BEIJING (Parliament Politics Magazine ) – A Shanghai court has convicted Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese-Canadian billionaire who was at the centre of an alleged kidnapping case in Hong Kong in 2017, to 13 years in prison and fined his company a record 55.03 billion yuan (£6.8 billion).
The Shanghai first intermediate court stated that 50 years old Xiao and his Tomorrow Holdings conglomerate were accused of illegally absorbing public deposits, violating the use of entrusted property, using funds unlawfully, and bribery.
According to the Shanghai court, Xiao and Tomorrow “severely violated financial management order” and “damaged state financial security,” and they were both punished with 6.5 million yuan for their crimes.
In order to avoid financial oversight and pursue illegal interests, the court claimed that from 2001 to 2021, Xiao and Tomorrow provided cash, real estate and shares to government officials totalling over 680 million yuan.
Xiao was known to have connections to the elite of China’s Communist party. He was born in China and received his education at Peking University, the top institution in the nation. But he hasn’t been spotted in public since 2017, when he was under investigation as part of a crackdown on state-led conglomerates.
A reclusive man, Xiao’s enormous economic wealth was upended in January 2017 when he was purportedly escorted out of Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong in a wheelchair by Chinese security operatives in plainclothes, who at the time were not authorised to operate in Hong Kong.
A New York Times reported that he had been taken across the border into China, probably by boat to escape immigration checks.
At the time, Hong Kong authorities said that he had crossed into mainland China. Furthermore, Tomorrow claimed to be on the mainland. Nevertheless, the incident shook Hong Kong at a time when Beijing’s influence was growing. Five booksellers from Hong Kong vanished from different parts of Asia two years ago and turned up in mainland China.
Xiao’s business empire had undergone changes in the time since he vanished. As part of a campaign to reduce the risks presented by financial conglomerates, Chinese officials seized nine related institutions of the group in July 2020. A few months later, China Chengtong Holdings Group, an investment firm owned by the state, said that it would acquire the majority of stocks in securities firm related to Tomorrow Group.
But it wasn’t until this year that reports of Xiao’s fate started to surface. Over five years after his alleged kidnapping, he was finally tried last month.
