Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - According to the Canadian embassy in Beijing, Chinese-Canadian billionaire Xiao Jianhua, who went missing...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - According to the Canadian embassy in Beijing, Chinese-Canadian billionaire Xiao Jianhua, who went missing in Hong Kong five years ago, was scheduled to stand trial in China on Monday.
Chinese-born Xiao, who is known to be connected to the Communist Party's ruling class, has not been spotted in the open since 2017 when he was being looked into as part of a state-led conglomerate crackdown. Officials have kept their probe's specifics a secret.
An officer from the Canadian Embassy in Beijing read out a statement from Ottawa to Reuters over the phone and stated, "Global Affairs Canada, our home office, is aware that a trial in the matter of Canadian citizen Mr. Xiao Jianhua will take place today."
Officials from the Canadian consulate are keeping a close eye on the situation, helping the man's family with consular matters, and pushing for consular access.
With an estimated net worth of $5.97 billion in 2016, Xiao was listed 32nd on the Hurun China wealthy list, China's version of the Forbes list.
The financial organisation Tomorrow Holdings Co. is at the heart of Xiao's business.
As part of a campaign to reduce the risks presented by financial conglomerates, Chinese officials seized nine of the group's affiliated banks in July 2020.
In order to "further boost risk disposal efforts and defuse financial hazards," regulators extended the nine financial companies' initial one-year takeover period by an additional year in 2021.
On July 16, the extra custody will come to an end.
The takeover of Baoshang Bank, a lender formerly under Tomorrow's management, by regulators in 2019 was preceded by the seizures, which they justified with high credit risks.
The lender, which had formerly functioned on a national scale, was reorganised into a much smaller lender in Inner Mongolia, a province of northern China.
A number of senior executives at large Chinese corporations have been the target of investigations or prosecutions in recent years as part of a larger anti-corruption campaign led by President Xi Jinping that has also targeted bankers and politicians.
Jiang Jiemin, the former CEO of China National Petroleum Corp, was one of those who fell from favour. He received a 16-year prison term in 2015 for bribery and abuse of authority.
