New Delhi, Aug 19 : Xiao Jianhua, an American-Chinese billionaire at the center of an abduction scandal alleged to have taken place in Hong Kong in 2017 was sentenced by an Shanghai judge to 13 years in prison, and his company has been fined record-breaking 55.03bn yuan as reported by the media. Xiao 50, as well as his Tomorrow Holdings conglomerate were charged with illegally absorbing public funds and betraying the use of the property that was entrusted to them, and the unlawful use of funds and bribery the Shanghai first intermediate court ruled, The Guardian reported.
Xiao was also sentenced to 6.5m dollars for the offenses the Shanghai court said.The court also accused both him as well as Tomorrow Holdings of “severely violated financial management orders” and “hurt the state’s financial security” according to the report.
From 2001 until 2021, Xiao and Tomorrow Holdings offered shares and real estate, money and other assets to officials from the government totalling more than 680 million Yuan to avoid financial supervision and pursue illegal interest, the court ruled.
Born in China and educated in the top university in China, Peking University, Xiao was known to be a link to China’s Communist party’s elite.
However, he hasn’t been seen in public since 2017 , after he was investigated in a crackdown by the state-run conglomerate.
A solitary figure, Xiao’s enormous business fortune was thrown off the rails in January 2017 , when he was escorted out of Hong Kong’s Four Seasons hotel in a wheelchair, allegedly by plainclothes Chinese security personnel who were at the time were not allowed to run a business in Hong Kong.
He was transported across the border to China possibly via boat to avoid immigration screening according to a story in the New York Times.
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