- Joined
- Jul 24, 2008
- Messages
- 33,627
- Points
- 0
[h=1]The man with the golden touch[/h]
[h=2]Investigation reveals next president and family have built enormous empire[/h]
By Malcolm Moore, Daily TelegraphJune 30, 2012
[h=1]Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talk during a meeting before a luncheon last February. Xi and his family are rumoured to have built an enormous financial empire.[/h][h=2]Photograph by: Larry Downing, Reuters Files , Daily Telegraph[/h]
The family of China's next president has amassed a fortune running into hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a Bloomberg News investigation.
The disclosure comes as the Communist party faces increasingly difficult questions about how its leaders, who are paid ministerial salaries of just $12,700 a year, live such gilded lives.
Xi Jinping, who is 59 this month, is all but certain to be announced later this year as China's next paramount leader.
Xi has carefully fostered a reputation for clean government and there is no evidence that he has a personal fortune. Neither does his wife Peng Liyuan, 49, a famous People's Liberation Army singer; or their daughter, the documents show. Chinese officials are forbidden from accumulating significant wealth.
However, his daughter Xi Mingze studies at Harvard University under a pseudonym and an investigation by the Bloomberg news agency revealed Friday that Xi's other relations have built an enormous empire.
There is also no indication that Xi helped to advance his relations' business, or of any wrongdoing by Xi or his family, Bloomberg said. However, the Chinese authorities were quick to censor the report, blocking Bloomberg's website from view on the mainland.
The investments were hidden from public view in multiple holding companies, but were identified among thousands of pages of regulatory findings, according to Bloomberg.
Most of the extended family's trace-able fortune is held by Xi's older sister, Qi Qiaoqiao, 63, her husband Deng Jiagui, 61, and her daughter Zhang Yannan, 33. However, a brother-in-law, Wu Long, ran New Postcom Equipment Co, which has won hundreds of millions of yuan in contracts from state-owned China Mobile.
Qi and Deng's interests include a $288 million share of the assets of Shenzhen Yuanwei, a property investment company, according to a filing from December 2011.
Other companies in the same group, wholly owned by family members, have assets of at least $86 million. They also have an indirect 18 per cent stake in Jiangxi Rare Earth & Rare Metals Tungsten Group, whose assets are worth some $1.7 billion. Another $500,000 investment in Beijing's Hiconics Drive Technology company, made in 2009, is now worth $21 million.
The sums do not account for liabilities and consequently do not reflect the net worth of the family.
The family also owns a villa in Hong Kong worth $32 million and another six properties in the former British colony with an estimated value of $24 million.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the revelations.
As China prepares for its once-in-a-decade transition of power, there is growing outrage over the wealth of its "princelings," the relations of Communist party leaders.
While many princelings engage in legitimate business, there is a wide-spread perception that they trade on their connections to make money.
Bo Xilai, a member of the Communist party's politburo and former chief of Chongqing, is now under investigation amid suspicions that his wife funnelled billions of dollars out of China.
On April 11, just hours after announcing Bo's purge, the People's Daily, the official party mouthpiece, attacked Communist leaders for parlaying their power into wealth. "Many use designated third parties - spouses, sons and daughters, lovers or friends" to generate and conceal wealth," it said.
Bo's son, Guagua, has recently graduated from Harvard after studying at Harrow and Oxford University.
His elder brother used a second name to control millions of dollars of shares at the Hong Kong subsidiary of a Chinese state bank. Two of his sisters are worth at least $127 million, according to a separate Bloomberg investigation.
There is a danger now, however, that the exposure of Bo's wrongdoings will serve to illuminate the behaviour of other Communist party leaders.
"Even Bo's opponents want every-thing to return to normal as soon as possible. His case is not unique and in some way illustrates the breakdown of the entire system," said one university professor, who asked not to be named.
Bo Zhiyue, a professor of Chinese politics at Singapore's National University, said no systemic change was likely. "It is not possible for them to go after the princeling families. It would be like committing suicide. In the end, they will make Bo a single case and claim there is no wider implication."
The revelations about Xi's family's wealth will now challenge that. A poll in the People's Daily showed 91 per cent of respondents believed that all rich families in China had political backgrounds.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/with+golden+touch/6866610/story.html#ixzz1zIkJFTo4
[h=2]Investigation reveals next president and family have built enormous empire[/h]
By Malcolm Moore, Daily TelegraphJune 30, 2012
[h=1]Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talk during a meeting before a luncheon last February. Xi and his family are rumoured to have built an enormous financial empire.[/h][h=2]Photograph by: Larry Downing, Reuters Files , Daily Telegraph[/h]
The family of China's next president has amassed a fortune running into hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a Bloomberg News investigation.
The disclosure comes as the Communist party faces increasingly difficult questions about how its leaders, who are paid ministerial salaries of just $12,700 a year, live such gilded lives.
Xi Jinping, who is 59 this month, is all but certain to be announced later this year as China's next paramount leader.
Xi has carefully fostered a reputation for clean government and there is no evidence that he has a personal fortune. Neither does his wife Peng Liyuan, 49, a famous People's Liberation Army singer; or their daughter, the documents show. Chinese officials are forbidden from accumulating significant wealth.
However, his daughter Xi Mingze studies at Harvard University under a pseudonym and an investigation by the Bloomberg news agency revealed Friday that Xi's other relations have built an enormous empire.
There is also no indication that Xi helped to advance his relations' business, or of any wrongdoing by Xi or his family, Bloomberg said. However, the Chinese authorities were quick to censor the report, blocking Bloomberg's website from view on the mainland.
The investments were hidden from public view in multiple holding companies, but were identified among thousands of pages of regulatory findings, according to Bloomberg.
Most of the extended family's trace-able fortune is held by Xi's older sister, Qi Qiaoqiao, 63, her husband Deng Jiagui, 61, and her daughter Zhang Yannan, 33. However, a brother-in-law, Wu Long, ran New Postcom Equipment Co, which has won hundreds of millions of yuan in contracts from state-owned China Mobile.
Qi and Deng's interests include a $288 million share of the assets of Shenzhen Yuanwei, a property investment company, according to a filing from December 2011.
Other companies in the same group, wholly owned by family members, have assets of at least $86 million. They also have an indirect 18 per cent stake in Jiangxi Rare Earth & Rare Metals Tungsten Group, whose assets are worth some $1.7 billion. Another $500,000 investment in Beijing's Hiconics Drive Technology company, made in 2009, is now worth $21 million.
The sums do not account for liabilities and consequently do not reflect the net worth of the family.
The family also owns a villa in Hong Kong worth $32 million and another six properties in the former British colony with an estimated value of $24 million.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the revelations.
As China prepares for its once-in-a-decade transition of power, there is growing outrage over the wealth of its "princelings," the relations of Communist party leaders.
While many princelings engage in legitimate business, there is a wide-spread perception that they trade on their connections to make money.
Bo Xilai, a member of the Communist party's politburo and former chief of Chongqing, is now under investigation amid suspicions that his wife funnelled billions of dollars out of China.
On April 11, just hours after announcing Bo's purge, the People's Daily, the official party mouthpiece, attacked Communist leaders for parlaying their power into wealth. "Many use designated third parties - spouses, sons and daughters, lovers or friends" to generate and conceal wealth," it said.
Bo's son, Guagua, has recently graduated from Harvard after studying at Harrow and Oxford University.
His elder brother used a second name to control millions of dollars of shares at the Hong Kong subsidiary of a Chinese state bank. Two of his sisters are worth at least $127 million, according to a separate Bloomberg investigation.
There is a danger now, however, that the exposure of Bo's wrongdoings will serve to illuminate the behaviour of other Communist party leaders.
"Even Bo's opponents want every-thing to return to normal as soon as possible. His case is not unique and in some way illustrates the breakdown of the entire system," said one university professor, who asked not to be named.
Bo Zhiyue, a professor of Chinese politics at Singapore's National University, said no systemic change was likely. "It is not possible for them to go after the princeling families. It would be like committing suicide. In the end, they will make Bo a single case and claim there is no wider implication."
The revelations about Xi's family's wealth will now challenge that. A poll in the People's Daily showed 91 per cent of respondents believed that all rich families in China had political backgrounds.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/with+golden+touch/6866610/story.html#ixzz1zIkJFTo4
