There is always a lot to play for in Las Vegas, but when Xu Chaofan (
The two men, former employees of the Bank of China, are charged with masterminding a US$485 million fraud, in league with their Chinese-born, US-national wives, and a fifth person, Yu Zhendong (余振東), who has already been given a 12-year prison sentence for his part in the alleged conspiracy.
With the death sentence a possible punishment for serious financial crime in China, the men's lives could be at risk if they are returned to their homeland.
The Chinese banking authorities, meanwhile, want their money back, and not just the cash allegedly taken out of the country by the Las Vegas defendants (to add another layer of mystery to the case, that seems to have all but disappeared, squandered on the Vegas roulette tables).
Official Chinese estimates indicate that the Xus' alleged ill-gotten gains were the mere tip of an enormous iceberg of fraud involving 4,000 perpetrators, most of whom are on the run from Chinese justice.
The authorities in Beijing believe that the banking system has been defrauded of as much as US$50 billion since the early 1990s, when China was reintroduced to the global financial system after decades of communist isolation.
That is bigger than the GDP of quite a few countries, and much bigger than the revenues of any of the big Chinese banks.
The Xus are not alone in being on trial in Las Vegas. Also in the dock is China's new economic system, which Beijing is keen to show off to the world ahead of the Beijing Olympics in two years' time and the Shanghai Expo of 2010. The result in Nevada will show whether the newly reformed Chinese finance houses are successfully closing the loopholes and catching the fraudsters -- or else demonstrate once more that China's banks are irredeemably riddled with crooks.
The Xus are accused of having made off with US$485 million from a sub-branch of the Bank of China in Kaiping, Guangdong Province -- China's biggest bank crime.
With their wives, they face 15 charges of racketeering, fraud and money laundering in what prosecutors have dubbed simply "The Enterprise."
China would like them to be sent home, and be forced to repatriate as much of their money as can be traced. If that happens, it could set the precedent for a major return of funds to China as runaway bank officials are tracked down and brought to justice in their favorite destination, the US.
The fifth accused, Yu Zhendong, was sentenced to 12 years by a Nevada court in an earlier trial, and agreed to be sent home in return for a guarantee that he would not be tortured or executed and would not be given a longer prison term in China. His case is being considered by the Supreme People's Court, China's highest court.
The South China Morning Post reported last month that investors in the Bank of China -- which includes Royal Bank of Scotland, the Edinburgh-based bank which speaks for 10 percent of its shares -- would want to know how three managers of a provincial sub-branch could get their hands on so much money and siphon it abroad.
The newspaper added that the bank had managed to stop 65 cases of fraud in the first 10 months of last year, sacking 31 branch heads as a result.
The two Xus, their wives and Yu are alleged to have stolen funds from the bank throughout the 1990s. The wives divorced their husbands in 1999, and paid US$200,000 each to Chinese men with US citizenship to enter into sham marriages with them.
After becoming US citizens, the women are said to have received the money smuggled out of China by their former husbands through Hong Kong shell companies. The three men then followed them, and Yu, at least, contracted a fake marriage with a Chinese holding a US passport.
Reports from Las Vegas say each of the women amassed luxury goods and bought an expensive home in a smart suburb of Vancouver favored by Chinese. When their homes were raided, currency from 14 countries was found.
They were regular visitors from Canada to Las Vegas, where they are reported to have staked as much as US$2 million in a night's gambling.
But so much of Xu Guojun's money was spent that, when he was arrested in Kansas in 2004, he was working as a cook in a Chinese restaurant and living in an empty flat, his wife having gone back to Vancouver.
The two Xus and their wives have pleaded not guilty, and defense attorneys are likely to ask why the state of Nevada is prosecuting offenses alleged to have been committed in China.
Bret Whipple, the lawyer representing Xu Guojun, says his client did not make off with the money but lost it in bad investments and currency plays that went wrong. Afraid of the punishment that awaited him, he fled China for the US, the defense argues.
It is also likely to try to paint the US authorities as doing the work of an autocratic Chinese communist regime.
Whipple told the Las Vegas Business Press that Washington is prosecuting the Xus because it does not want to offend a country that holds so much of its debt.
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