BEIJING –
Chinese-Canadian billionaire Xiao Jianghua, who disappeared in Hong Kong five years ago, was due to stand trial in China on Monday, the Canadian embassy in Beijing said.
Chinese-born Xiao, who is known to have ties to China’s Communist Party elite, has not been seen in public since 2017 after being investigated amid a crackdown on a state-run conglomerate. Specifics of the investigation have not been disclosed by officials.
Xiao was taken in a wheelchair from a luxury hotel in Hong Kong in the early hours with his head covered, a source close to the tycoon told Reuters at the time.
“Global Affairs Canada, our home office, is aware that the trial of Canadian citizen Mr. Xiao Jianhua will take place today,” a Canadian embassy official told Reuters by telephone in a statement read from Ottawa.
“Canadian consular officials are closely monitoring this case, providing consular services to his family and continuing to push for consular access.”
Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said on Monday he was not aware of the situation when asked about Xiao’s trial at a media briefing.
Xiao was ranked 32nd on the 2016 Hurun China Rich List, the Chinese 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 affiliated institutions were seized by Chinese regulators as part of a crackdown on the risks posed by financial conglomerates.
In 2021, regulators extended the one-year takeover period of the nine financial firms by another year to “further promote de-risking and de-risking work”.
The extended detention ends on July 16.
The seizures were preceded by the 2019 takeover of Baoshang Bank, a lender once controlled by Tomorrow, by regulators citing serious credit risks.
The lender, which operated across the country, was transformed into a much smaller lender in its home region of Inner Mongolia in northern China.
In recent years, a number of executives at major Chinese companies have come under investigation or prosecution amid a broader crackdown on corruption led by President Xi Jinping that has also drawn in politicians and bankers.
Among those who have fallen out of favor is Jiang Jiemin, a former head of China National Petroleum Corp who was sentenced to 16 years for bribery and abuse of power in 2015.
In 2017, Ai Baojun, former chairman of Baoshan Iron and Steel who became vice mayor of Shanghai, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for bribery and corruption.
(Reporting by Martin Quinn Pollard in Beijing and Meg Shen in Hong Kong; Writing by Ryan Wu; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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