He had disappeared in 2017 in mysterious circumstances: the Canadian tycoon of Chinese origin Xiao Jianhua, once reputed to be close to senior communist leaders, was sentenced Friday in China to 13 years in prison for fraud.
Xiao Jianhua was one of the country’s richest men at the time and the founder of the Tomorrow conglomerate, an empire with diverse interests including banking, real estate and insurance.
Until his disappearance, Mr. Xiao lived in Hong Kong in an apartment in a multi-star hotel, the Four Seasons, which had the reputation of being a haven for Chinese business magnates.
According to press reports at the time, the billionaire was kidnapped at the end of January 2017 by Beijing agents, in defiance of Hong Kong laws which then prohibited Chinese police from operating in the semi-autonomous territory.
The case had caused a stir in the former British colony, which has a legal framework distinct from that in force in mainland China.
Since Mr. Xiao’s disappearance, little information had leaked out and the Chinese authorities remained silent on the matter.
The Canadian Embassy in Beijing had nevertheless confirmed last month the opening of a trial but without specifying the charges against its national.
No diplomat was allowed in the audience.
“China does not recognize dual nationality,” a spokesman for Chinese diplomacy, Wang Wenbin, justified on Friday.
Therefore Mr. Xiao does not “benefit from the right to consular protection”, he explained during a daily press briefing.
Fall of a Billionaire
On Friday, justice sentenced the businessman to 13 years in prison.
He was found guilty of “embezzlement of public funds”, “illegal use of funds” and corruption, said in a press release the Intermediate People’s Court No. 1 of Shanghai where the businessman was tried.
Xiao Jianhua is also fined 6.5 million yuan (around 946,000 euros).
The Tomorrow conglomerate is sentenced to pay some 55 billion yuan (8 billion euros).
According to press reports, the tycoon had close ties with senior leaders of the ruling Communist Party (CCP) in China.
The businessman may have been a victim of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign which, according to his critics, also serves to target his political opponents and their supporters.
The Xiao Jianhua case recalls the “disappearance” in 2015 of five Hong Kong booksellers, known for publishing books with salacious content on the Chinese political class.
All had vanished to resurface in mainland China, in the hands of the authorities.
One of them, Lam Wing-kee, had been allowed to return to Hong Kong, to collect the list of customers from his bookstore and return to China. But he had instead summoned the press to deliver explosive revelations about what had happened to him.
Coming from a poor background, Xiao Jianhua, after studying at the prestigious Peking University, began by selling computers. He was once one of the richest men in China, thanks to the group Tomorrow which he founded.
According to the Hurun ranking of Chinese billionaires, the magnate’s fortune was estimated at some six billion dollars in 2017, the year of his disappearance.