Canadian tycoon, missing for five years, reappears during trial in China
Xia Jianhua was abducted from a Hong Kong hotel in 2017. La Universidad China de Hong Kong/AFP
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After being kidnapped in 2017 from a hotel in Hong Kong, Xia Jianhua reappeared on Monday July 4 in a Chinese court, announced the Canadian Embassy in China.
The Canadian tycoon, on trial for "
illegal fundraising
", is said to have had close ties to the upper echelons of the Communist Party.
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With our correspondent in Beijing,
Stéphane Lagarde
His trial, which has been postponed several times, was scheduled for Shanghai in late June, according to the official
Sina Finance
website .
The defendant would have decided to “
cooperate satisfactorily with the investigation
”, allowing his presentation before the judges.
Because for five years, no news of him.
In January 2017, Xiao Jianhua was abducted from a five-star hotel in Hong Kong and then taken back to mainland China by state security agents.
Held incommunicado, nothing has filtered since on his file.
Canadian authorities tell AFP that they “
continue to press for consular access
”.
One of the richest men in China
What is known is that Xiao Jianhua was one of the richest men in China at the time of his disappearance, with a personal fortune estimated at just under 4.8 billion euros by the media. of state.
Above all, he was at the head of a financial empire, the “Tomorrow Group”, made up of at least nine listed companies, holding 44 financial institutions, including 17 banks, nine insurance companies, four trust companies.
And this in the form of a complex shareholding, of shell companies managed by relatives and "
former comrades from Peking University
", writes Sina Finance, knowing that he was at the head of the official student union of the university at the time of the Beijing Spring crackdown in 1989.
Misappropriation of public funds
Officially, the authorities accuse him of having misappropriated public deposits.
A charge punishable by at least five years in prison.
Unofficially, some evoke a disappearance linked to its proximity to the top of the red elite and the secrets that could hinder Chinese power.
"
After five years of waiting, our family continues, based on my brother's strict instructions, to trust the Chinese government and Chinese law,
" the suspect's older brother told the
Wall Street Journal
last month.
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