Shanghai court jails Chinese-Canadian billionaire Xiao Jianhua for 13 years
Beijing (China), August 19: A Shanghai court sentenced Chinese-Canadian tycoon Xiao Jianhua to 13 years in prison on Friday.
According to Shanghai First Intermediate Court rulings, Xiao's Tomorrow Holding conglomerate was also fined 55.03 billion yuan (USD 8.09 billion). As per the court, Xiao and Tomorrow "severely violated financial management order" and "hurt state financial security."
China has formally put Xiao Jianhua on trial, over five years after he went missing in Hong Kong.
The disappearance of Xiao sent shockwaves through Hong Kong's elite business community, which widely interpreted it as a sign that the city was no longer safe from the mainland's security apparatus.
It also fueled wider concerns about the city's freedoms, as guaranteed by the "one country, two systems" policy agreed to as part of Britain's 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.
Xiao, the founder of the Beijing-based Tomorrow Group, was born in China and had ties to China's Communist Party (CCP) echelon.
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His disappearance occurred at a time when the Chinese government, led by President Xi Jinping, was prosecuting businesspeople accused of bribery and other wrongdoing as part of an anti-corruption campaign.
Xiao disappeared during a period when Chinese police were barred from operating in Hong Kong, which has a legal system based on the "one country, two systems" framework.
Xiao reportedly worked for a number of powerful families in China over the course of his career and was once described as a "banker for the ruling class" by The New York Times.
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-PTC News
