Shanghai court jails Chinese-Canadian tycoon Xiao Jianhua for 13 years
Aug 19, 2022
Beijing [China], August 19 : A Shanghai court on Friday jailed Chinese-Canadian tycoon Xiao Jianhua for 13 years.
As per Shanghai First Intermediate Court rulings, Xiao's Tomorrow Holding conglomerate has also been fined to the tune of 55.03 billion yuan (USD 8.09 billion).
The court said that Xiao and Tomorrow had "severely violated financial management order" and "hurt state financial security".
China has formally put Xiao on trial, more than five years after the tycoon went missing in Hong Kong.
Xiao's disappearance sent shockwaves through Hong Kong's elite business community, where it was widely interpreted as a signal the city was no longer beyond the reach of the mainland's security apparatus.
It also stoked wider fears concerning the erosion of the city's freedoms, as guaranteed under the "one country, two systems" policy agreed to as part of Britain's 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.
Xiao, the founder of Beijing-based Tomorrow Group was born in China and was known to have links to China's Communist Party (CCP) echelon.
His's disappearance came as the Chinese government, under President Xi Jinping, was prosecuting businesspeople accused of bribery and other misconduct, in an anti-corruption campaign.
Xiao disappeared at a time when Chinese police were prohibited from operating in Hong Kong, which has a legal system under "one country, two systems" framework.
Xiao reportedly, worked on behalf of a number of powerful families, in China over the course of his career, and was once described by The New York Times as "a banker for the ruling class."
By 2016, he was worth an estimated USD 6 billion.