Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese-Canadian billionaire at the center of an alleged 2017 Hong Kong kidnapping scandal, was sentenced by a Shanghai court to 13 years in prison and his company fined a record $55.03 billion. yuan (£6.8 billion).
Xiao, 50, and his conglomerate Tomorrow Holdings have been charged with illegal absorption of public deposits, treason of using entrusted assets, illegal use of funds and bribery, the Shanghai First Intermediate Court has heard.
Xiao was also fined 6.5 million yuan for the crimes, the Shanghai court said, accusing him and Tomorrow of “seriously violating the financial management order” and “undermining the financial security of the state”.
From 2001 to 2021, Xiao and Tomorrow donated stocks, real estate, cash and other assets to government officials totaling more than 680 million yuan, to evade financial monitoring and seek interests illegitimate, the court said.
Born in China and educated at the country’s top institution, Peking University, Xiao was known to have ties to the country’s Communist Party elite. But he has not been seen in public since 2017 after being investigated as part of a state-led conglomerate crackdown.
A reclusive figure, Xiao’s enormous business fortune was turned upside down in January 2017 when he was whisked out of Hong Kong’s Four Seasons hotel in a wheelchair, allegedly by plainclothes Chinese security guards, who at the era were not allowed to operate in Hong Kong.
He was taken across the Chinese border, possibly by boat to avoid immigration checks, according to a New York Times report.
Hong Kong police said at the time that he had crossed into mainland China. Tomorrow also said he was on the mainland. Still, the episode rocked Hong Kong at a time of heightened influence from Beijing. Two years earlier, five Hong Kong booksellers disappeared from various places in Asia and resurfaced in mainland China.
In the years since his disappearance, Xiao’s business empire has been restructured. In July 2020, nine of the group’s linked institutions were seized by Chinese regulators as part of a crackdown on risks posed by financial conglomerates. A few months later, state-owned investment firm China Chengtong Holdings Group announced that it would acquire a majority stake in a securities company linked to Tomorrow Group.
But news of Xiao’s fate only began to emerge this year. Last month he was finally brought to trial, more than five years after his alleged abduction.