Chinese-Canadian billionaire Xiao Jianhua (肖建華), who went missing in Hong Kong five years ago, was due to go on trial in China yesterday, the Canadian embassy in Beijing said.
China-born Xiao, known to have links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elite, has not been seen in public since 2017 after he was investigated amid a state-led conglomerate crackdown. The specifics of the probe have not been disclosed by officials.
Xiao was whisked away in a wheelchair from a luxury Hong Kong hotel in the early hours with his head covered, a source close to the tycoon said at the time.
“Global Affairs Canada, our home office, is aware that a trial in the case of Canadian citizen Mr Xiao Jianhua will take place today,” a Canadian embassy official said by telephone in a readout of a statement from Ottawa.
“Canadian consular officials are monitoring this case closely, providing consular services to his family and continue to press for consular access,” the official said.
Asked about the trial at a media briefing, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian (趙立堅) yesterday said that he was not aware of the situation.
Xiao was ranked 32nd on the 2016 Hurun China rich list, China’s equivalent of the Forbes list, with an estimated net worth of US$5.97 billion at the time.
At the center of Xiao’s empire is the financial group Tomorrow Holdings Co. In July 2020, nine of the group’s related institutions were seized by Chinese regulators as part of a crackdown on risks posed by financial conglomerates.
Last year, regulators extended the one-year take-over period of the nine financial enterprises by another year to “further promote risk disposal work and defuse financial risks.” The extended custody is set to end on July 16.
The seizures were preceded by a takeover of Baoshang Bank in 2019, a lender once controlled by Tomorrow, by regulators, citing severe credit risks.
The lender, which had operated nationwide, was revamped into a much smaller lender back in its home region of Inner Mongolia in northern China.
In recent years, a number of executives at big Chinese companies have been subject to investigation or prosecution amid a broader crackdown on corruption spearheaded by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that has also ensnared politicians and bankers.
Among those who fell from grace was Jiang Jiemin (蔣潔敏), former head of China National Petroleum Corp, who in 2015 was sentenced to 16 years for bribery and abuse of power.
In 2017, Ai Baojun (艾寶俊), a former chairman of Baoshan Iron and Steel who was vice mayor of Shanghai from 2012 to 2015, was sentenced to 17 years in jail for bribery and graft.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
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A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
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