He disappeared in 2017 from his luxurious Hong Kong hotel in mysterious conditions: the Canadian tycoon of Chinese origin Xiao Jianhua, once reputed to be close to senior communist leaders, is on trial this Monday in China.
He was one of China’s richest men and the founder of the Tomorrow conglomerate, an empire with diverse interests including banking, real estate and insurance.
Until his disappearance, Mr. Xiao lived in Hong Kong in an apartment in a multi-star hotel, the Four Seasons, which had the reputation of being a haven for Chinese business magnates.
According to press reports at the time, the billionaire was kidnapped at the end of January 2017 by Beijing agents, in defiance of Hong Kong laws which then prohibited Chinese police from operating in the semi-autonomous territory.
The case had caused a stir in the former British colony, which has a legal framework distinct from that in force in mainland China.
Since Mr. Xiao’s disappearance, little information has leaked out and the Chinese authorities have always remained silent on the matter.
The Canadian Embassy in Beijing confirmed the businessman’s trial on Monday.
“Global Affairs Canada is aware that a trial in the case of the Canadian citizen, Mr. Xiao Jianhua, will take place on July 4, 2022,” the embassy told AFP, which did not specify the place of the hearing. trial or charges once morest the accused.
“Canadian consular officials are following this case closely, providing consular services to his family and continuing to press for consular access,” she said.
“Very complicated”
According to press reports, the tycoon had close ties with senior leaders of the ruling Communist Party (CCP) in China.
The businessman may have been a victim of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign which, according to his critics, also serves to target his political opponents and their supporters.
“After five years of quiet waiting, our family continues, on the basis of my brother’s strict instructions, to trust the government and Chinese law,” the eldest brother of the ousted tycoon told the Wall Street Journal last month. Xiao Xinhua.
“It’s very complicated,” he said of the case, according to the American daily.
The Xiao Jianhua case recalls the “disappearance” in 2015 of five Hong Kong booksellers, known for publishing books with salacious content on the Chinese political class.
All had vanished to resurface in mainland China, in the hands of justice.
One of them, Lam Wing-kee, had been allowed to return to Hong Kong to collect his bookstore’s customer list and return to mainland China. But he had instead summoned the press to deliver explosive revelations regarding what had happened to him.
Tensions ahead?
Coming from a poor background, Xiao Jianhua, following studying at the prestigious Peking University, started out selling computers. He was once one of the richest men in China.
According to the Hurun ranking of Chinese billionaires, the magnate’s fortune was estimated at some six billion dollars in 2017, the year of his disappearance.
This legal case might come back to poison the Sino-Canadian relations.
The years following Xiao Jianhua’s disappearance had been marked by high tensions between China and Canada, sparked by the late 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Meng Wanzhou.
This financial director of the private Chinese telecommunications group Huawei had been arrested at the request of the United States, which demanded her extradition to try her for fraud.
In the wake of his arrest, Beijing arrested two Canadians in China and targeted Canadian agricultural exports. The three protagonists were finally released in September 2021.
A thaw in relations followed. In May 2022, China lifted its ban on imports of Canadian canola, a variety of rapeseed.
