'Tiger Wife' who wooed doomed major general

[GENESIMM0NS]

'Tiger Wife' who wooed doomed major general

Wu Fangfang left her husband and married Guo Zhenggang as his star was rising, reports say

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 22 March, 2015, 6:32am
UPDATED : Sunday, 22 March, 2015, 6:32am

Minnie Chan [email protected]

Businesswoman Wu Fangfang (right) married Guo Zhenggang in about a year of divorcing her earlier husband. Photos: SMP

Graft-busters announced this month they were investigating Major General Guo Zhenggang, but the end of his career nearly came in 2012 - when a woman burst into his office claiming she was carrying his illegitimate child, according to a report by a weekly magazine.

Extra-marital affairs are strictly forbidden by military regulations and Guo, then a rising star within the PLA, appeared faced with a difficult choice.

He was already married to an official working at the communication headquarters of the PLA General Staff, and with whom he shared a daughter, Hong Kong-based Phoenix Weekly reported.

Guo, 42, had just finished refresher courses at the PLA National Defence University in Beijing, a sign the son of then-deputy chairman of the Central Military Commission, Guo Boxiong , would likely be promoted within a few years.

It was around that time he met Wu Fangfang , a 45-year-old businesswoman based in Hangzhou , the capital of Zhejiang province, the weekly cited a retired official at the junior Guo's department as saying.

She had ended a 21-year marriage with a local judge the year before. Her affair with Guo apparently intensified rapidly, and she soon became pregnant.

Guo's bright future was "nearly ruined by Wu when she broke into Guo's office with a baby bump," the veteran said. To save his career, Guo ended his first marriage and married Wu that December. Two months later their son was born. But their joy would prove short-lived. On March 2, the defence ministry announced Guo, deputy political commissar of the Zhejiang Military Area Command, was one of 14 senior officers being probed for suspected "legal violations and criminal offences".

Investigations into "big tigers" - President Xi Jinping's term for national figures targeted in his fight against graft- have found that so-called "tiger wives" have played key roles behind their husbands' corruption.

It was a remarkable move to the national stage for Wu, who hailed from a farming family in Hangzhou. She set up an estate management company in the late 1990s, and became a shareholder in Dong Wu, a company behind an unfinished building in a military-owned area of the city, according to the financial magazine Caijing. The project was intended to house a metal markets and the company collected more than 500 million yuan (HK$628 million) from some 2,000 investors and would-be tenants. The 300,000-square-metre mall was due for completion in 2011 but remains unfinished.

"Wu was a nameless businesswoman - she seldom made big money before marrying Guo," the Weekly citied a former partner as saying. "But after she married the junior Guo, more investors trusted her, which helped her to attract a more capital. But she still used her old tactics of promising high returns without any serious accounting."

While still married to the judge, Wu carried on an affair with her driver, who was 20 years her junior, the Weekly reported. In order to approach Guo, she decided to end that relationship, one of her business partners said, adding she gave six million yuan in cash along with a car and a villa to the man as compensation.

Both Guo and Wu were detained last month after 100 creditors gathered outside the headquarters of the military area in Hangzhou in January to demand back their investments, earlier reports said. It's not clear whether the couple's case will be used to target the senior Guo.

There has not been any official announcement that he is under investigation, but state media have suggested he might become a target.