Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese-Canadian billionaire, outside the Hong Kong International Financial Center on December 19, 2013. NEXT MAGAZINE VIA AP
The trial of billionaire businessman Xiao Jianhua, who has been held incommunicado for five years, began Monday, July 4th. Enriched by investments in finance and real estate, Xiao Jianhua has been dubbed the “banker to the Red Princes” for his business connections with the communist elite, including several former leaders and President Xi Jinping’s sister. Acquiring Canadian citizenship and residing in Hong Kong, then theoretically out of reach of Chinese police, was not enough to protect him: in 2017 he was kidnapped in Hong Kong and transported to mainland China. Mr. Xiao, 50, is one of the many victims of the sweeping anti-corruption campaign launched by Xi Jinping as soon as he came to power in late 2012, targeting both civil servants and entrepreneurs, with the close ones spared, of course the president. .
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It was the Canadian embassy in Beijing that revealed the holding of Mr Xiao’s trial without specifying the location of the trial or the charges against the accused, before admitting their diplomats were seen refusing access. “Canada has made several requests to participate in the hearing. Our presence has been denied by the Chinese authorities,” Canada’s embassy in Beijing said in a statement on Tuesday. Mr Xiao, whose wealth was estimated at €5.5 billion at the time of his disappearance, could be prosecuted for “illegally raising funds,” confirms the Wall Street Journal, which cites sources familiar with the matter. His financial empire is broken up by the authorities.
His kidnapping in Hong Kong in 2017 showed Beijing’s determination to enforce its grip without caring about appearances. CCTV footage from the Four Seasons Hotel, where Mr. Xiao stayed for several years, shows a group of men entering his suite on the evening of January 26. They come out at dawn and push Mr. Xiao, who is in a wheelchair with his head covered with a towel. However, Mr. Xiao was not disabled. A few days later, his company Tomorrow Group published a front-page statement in the Hong Kong daily Ming Pao that the boss had not been kidnapped but was “staying abroad”. His kidnapping, shortly after that of a few booksellers critical of power, alarmed Hong Kong residents at the time, who benefited from an independent legal system. In 2020, a national security law erased some of that autonomy.
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