In the latest issue of Caixin Weekly, the shadowy secret of Shanghai Yangpu District’s political and legal system is revealed – they have long been in cahoots with Zhao Fuqiang, a member of a triad organization, who offered bribes or used women to provide sexual bribes to the former, as well as executives of state-owned enterprises and police officers who were also “taken care of” by Zhao Fuqiang.
On September 22, 2020, Zhao Fuqiang, the 47-year-old de facto controller of Shanghai Yusheng Investment Management Co., Ltd (“Yusheng Investment”), and 38 other defendants were sentenced for organizing, leading, and participating in a triad organization, rape, organizing prostitution, fraud, forced trading, bribery, and bribery.
According to the verdict, Zhao Fuqiang organized and arranged many women through violence and other means to provide food and entertainment, prostitution and bribes for a long time in the office building and other places rented on Xuchang Road in Yangpu District on the north side of Huangpu River. The place is also known as the “Little Red House” by the public. The accumulation of capital and contacts has made Zhao Fuqiang expand day by day, claiming that “Yangpu can’t be unsettled”.
According to the verdict, Zhao Fuqiang was sentenced to a suspended death sentence with restrictions on sentence reduction for ten counts of organizing and leading a triad organization, rape, fraud, provocation, forced trade, extortion, theft, organizing prostitution, public debauchery and bribery. The remaining 37 people were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 2 years and 6 months to 20 years, including Zhao Fuqiang’s ex-wives and women who had children with Zhao Fuqiang, who also received sentences ranging from 8 years and 6 months to 20 years, and many friends and relatives of these women were sentenced.
Zhao Fuqiang appealed the verdict after the first trial, and the case was heard in the second trial and the verdict was upheld on Dec. 30, 2020.
Zhao Fuqiang’s case involved at least 13 local officials and cadres of state-owned enterprises, and triggered an “earthquake” in the political and legal system of Shanghai’s Yangpu District. The former standing committee member of the Yangpu District Committee and former secretary of the Political and Legal Committee, Lu Yan, was sentenced to 17 years in prison in the first instance for bribery, embezzlement, harboring and connivance with a triad organization; the former president of the Yangpu District Court, Ren Yongfei, was sentenced to 7 years and 6 months in prison in the first instance for bribery and connivance with a triad organization, and the sentence was upheld in the second instance; the former deputy director of the Yangpu Branch of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, Cen Hongquan, has also fallen. .
A number of state-owned enterprise staff, police station officers and industrial and commercial officers in Yangpu District were also sentenced: Hu Chenghao, former director of Pingliang Road Police Station, and Sun Zhendong, deputy director, were sentenced to four years and one year and six months in prison, respectively, for harboring Zhao Fuqiang’s gangster organization and conniving at the organization’s illegal and criminal activities. Wu Jianlei, the former director of Pingliang Industrial and Commercial Office, and Feng Boping, the former deputy director of Jiangpu Industrial and Commercial Office, were sentenced to 5 years and 6 months and 7 years in prison, respectively. Liang Chao, Li Bin and Zhu Jianping of Yangpu Trade were sentenced to 8 years, 10 years and 6 months and 7 years respectively for participating in the crime of triad nature organization, fraud, provoking and provoking trouble, and taking bribes. Wang Aiqing of Wei Baixin was sentenced to 7 years and 6 months for the crime of participating in a triad nature organization, fraud and bribery, and three other state-owned enterprise staff members of Shanghai Wuluan Building Investment and Development Co. and Shanghai Huangpu Public Rental Housing Operation Co.
On May 15, 2019, Lu Yan, then secretary of the political and legal committee of the Yangpu District Committee, made an appointment with Zhao Fuqiang in his office, saying that an arrest was imminent and persuaded him to leave Shanghai as soon as possible. Getting the news, Zhao Fuqiang fled to his hometown in Taixing, Jiangsu that night with several cell phones and three women in his car. The next day at 13:00, the police arrested Zhao Fuqiang and others in Taixing.
On July 29, 2019, Lu Yan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Yangpu District Committee and secretary of the District Political and Legal Committee, was investigated.
The official notification said that Lu Yan engaged in two-faced factions and two-faced people, privately conspired with members of triad organizations, inquired about cases and tipped them off, and willingly acted as an umbrella for black and evil forces; received gifts and gifts in violation of the law, engaged in profit-making activities in violation of the law, and engaged in money and sex deals; interfered with judicial and law enforcement activities in favor of the private sector; and lived a corrupt and degenerate life. He was in cahoots with unscrupulous private business owners, engaged in power and money deals, sought benefits for others in business operations, undertaking projects, coordinating cases, etc., and illegally received property. In collaboration with other state employees, he used the convenience of his position to illegally embezzle state property. Harboring triad organizations and their members.
After Zhao Fuqiang was introduced to Lu Yan, who is also a Jiangsu national, Lu Yan repeatedly arranged meals at Zhao Fuqiang’s office at 632 Xuchang Road, and also provided assistance to Zhao Fuqiang in speeding up business license processing, hearing company bankruptcy cases, and handling housing disputes, and repeatedly accepted bribes totaling 800,000 yuan (RMB, same below) in cash from Zhao Fuqiang.
In the second half of 2018, Ren was introduced by Lu Yan and accepted Zhao Fuqiang’s request to provide assistance in ending the bankruptcy proceedings of his Xiaogo Property, among other things, so that the company could survive.
“Zhao Fuqiang is a devil.”
Zhao Fuqiang came from rural Taixing, Jiangsu province, and worked as a tailor in his early years before landing in Shanghai’s central city of Yangpu in the 1990s. In the following decade, he switched from tailoring to running two hair salons offering prostitution services, and later became a “second landlord” for store leasing, completing his early capital accumulation by virtue of fraudulent set-up leases and incorporating a number of companies. In recent years, because of participation in the relocation clearing, gradually get a large number of state-owned enterprises housing, this time before being arrested, he again transformed the operation of the “Hui eat Hui drink food city” has been opened in three districts in Shanghai.
“Zhao Fuqiang is a devil.” A woman who worked at a hairdresser’s store owned by Zhao Fuqiang described how he recruited her from a nanny agency, hushed her and then had sex, then convinced her to prostitute herself with words such as “will be responsible for the rest of your life” and “make money together for your family”, but did not pay her wages The woman is not paid, but only given some living expenses at the end of the year. If the woman did not comply, Zhao Fuqiang either beat her or threatened to inform her relatives back home about the prostitution.
According to the verdict, during the six years Zhao Fuqiang ran the salon, many of the prostitutes in the store were administratively punished. One of Zhao Fuqiang’s ex-wives, Zong Mou, also worked as a prostitute there. She testified that Zhao Fuqiang told him to deny prostitution if he was investigated by the police, and that he could not give his name and sometimes had prostitutes use false identities.
During this period, Zhao Fuqiang found that he could make profits from subletting houses and gradually transformed into a “second landlord” for store rentals; the women who worked in the salon also became Zhao Fuqiang’s wives and core members of his company, in charge of the finance and internal affairs departments.
During the operation of the hairdresser, one of them was punished for not hanging a business license, Zhao Fuqiang was introduced to Feng Bo Ping, then deputy director of the Jiangpu Branch of the Shanghai Administration for Industry and Commerce, opening up a chain of human relationships.
Feng Bo Ping confessed that he accepted Zhao Fuqiang’s request to punish his unlicensed store in accordance with the minimum standard, or to punish instead of stopping, but also to help Zhao Fuqiang irregularities for individual business license.
Around 2008, Feng Bo Ping introduced Zhao Fuqiang to Wu Jianlei, then head of Pingliang Industrial and Commercial Office. The verdict showed that Wu Jianlei had sexual relations with two women at the sauna club and Zhao Fuqiang’s Xuchang Road office; when Wu Jianlei was complained about his reception attitude and words, Zhao Fuqiang sent people to stalk the complainant for many days, and also carried out verbal threats through the door phone system of the complainant’s residence, which was found to constitute the crime of provocation and nuisance in the first trial. Wu Jianlei confessed that he had helped Zhao Fuqiang to speed up the permit process by introducing properties and obtaining brokerage fees from them.
Zhao Fuqiang soon found it profitable in the housing leases, after more than a decade, he spent most of the time engaged in the store leasing “second landlord” business. The verdict shows that from 2004 onwards, Zhao Fuqiang gradually became involved in commercial leasing, monopolizing the housing stock through fraudulent means and using violence and “soft violence” to resolve leasing disputes.
The verdict recorded that between 2012 and June 2019 alone, Zhao Fuqiang’s organization engaged in housing leasing business throughout the city’s nine districts, involving more than 1,300 addresses, with profits totaling more than 970 million yuan; of which, from June 2014 to the crime, the organization used the aforementioned techniques to commit 84 cases of fraud, 15 cases of forced trading, 4 cases of extortion and 5 cases of provocation and nuisance, with individual amounts The individual amounts ranged from 3,000 yuan to more than 220,000 yuan, with illegal profits totaling more than 6 million yuan.
In addition to arranging meals, Zhao Fuqiang also organized weekend trips for officials to have sex with women.
According to the description of the informant, the first floor of the “Little Red Building” is the security and finance room, and the fourth floor above is the core staff and women’s dormitory, many women’s parents also live and work here. The elevator and different rooms in the building are installed with card access, outsiders such as to enter, but also need to contact Zhao Fuqiang through the intercom security. A number of sources who have worked here said that there are many surveillance cameras hidden in the building, and the parties involved were filmed having sex with photos and videos. These photos and videos were both Zhao Fuqiang’s fetish and his means of controlling women. If a woman showed signs of wanting to leave, he used them as blackmail, saying he would send the photos and videos to her elderly family members or post them everywhere.
In the verdict, the court found that Zhao Fuqiang, in order to control women for a long time and satisfy his personal lust, used the recruitment of the president’s assistant as bait to play with women by means of pre-setting traps in the employment contract and constantly instilling obscene ideas; he brutalized women by means of public humiliation, wanton beatings and restricting their freedom.
Zhao Fuqiang was also guilty of defrauding state-owned assets. The verdict recorded five crimes involving state-owned assets by Zhao Fuqiang, fraudulently obtaining municipal demolition and relocation compensation and rents totaling more than 54 million yuan, two of which caused Yangpu Trade and Yangpu City Investment to lose more than 20 million yuan each.
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