There is every indication that infighting at the top of the Communist Party is intensifying in the economic sphere.
Recently, the same foreign media have been releasing reports touching on different families within the CCP, such as those surrounding the investigation of Crown Resorts (hereinafter: Crown Group), which involves Xi Jinping‘s cousin. At the same Time, foreign media also recently broke the inside story of Xi preventing Jiang Zemin’s Family from relying on the Ant Group to make money.
Crown Group in the spotlight again, once broke the scandal of “Xi Jinping’s cousin
In February this year, Australia’s Crown Group broke the news again.
The New South Wales Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority (ILGA) commissioned an investigation into the Crown Group and released its report on February 9, concluding that the group was unfit to hold a casino license.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on February 10 that the report accused Crown of being involved in extensive money laundering activities, exposing employees to the risk of arrest by foreign justice systems, and establishing business relationships with triads and criminal organizations. The report mentioned that Crown also cooperated with Asian gaming intermediaries to bring big gamblers to Australia.
Five days later, on Feb. 15, China Daily again reported that Crown Group said CEO Ken Barton had resigned and that several board members had left the company.
For the Chinese, Crown Group is best known for its ties to “Xi Jinping’s cousin.
An August 2, 2019, report in the China Daily revealed that Xi’s cousin Ming Chai, a 63-year-old Australian citizen, is under investigation by Australian police and intelligence services for alleged organized crime, money laundering and peddling of Chinese influence.
Some officials say police are investigating Qi Ming’s alleged use in 2017 of what police call a money laundering front company that helped gamblers and suspects transfer money into and out of Australia.
Meanwhile, investigative agencies are also trying to identify the source of funds used by Zimin to place bets in high-stakes betting areas within Crown Group casinos and are looking into links between Zimin and various business partners.
In 2015, he was one of the hotel’s top 50 betting patrons, with an estimated $41 million in bets, and was classified as a “VVIP.
Australian officials said that in 2017, Zimin used a company disguised as a plastics importer to receive “significant” amounts of money from overseas. The officials said casino gamblers and suspected organized crime figures used the company to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars into and out of Australia over a 15-month period from 2017 to 2018.
A business partner who worked with Qi Ming said he also “liked the nightlife,” when other business partners told him that Qi Ming would spend hundreds of thousands of yuan a night in Shanghai when he drank with others.
In 2011, Qiming’s wife spent nearly $3.8 million on a large house in an upscale Melbourne suburb.
Qiming was among the passengers on a private plane parked at a beach resort airport that Australian law enforcement officials searched in 2016 on suspicion of money laundering, although the police investigation at the time focused on another partner who was on board with Qiming.
Qi worked as a senior executive at ZTE Corporation (ZTE) and Ningbo GQY Video. His father, Qi Rexin, is the brother of Xi’s mother, Qi Xin, and was formerly secretary of the CPC Gold General Corporation’s Party Committee and secretary of the Party Committee of the Armed Police Force Gold Command.
Chinese Communist Party Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying publicly responded to this in 2019, saying it was “gossip” and “an attempt to smear China based on some claims that have no basis in fact and catch the wind.”
Although China Daily specifically stated that “there is no indication that the incident is related to Xi Jinping,” in late August 2019, Wang Chunhan, a Beijing-based reporter for China Daily who worked on the story, was expelled from the Communist Party.
Foreign media subsequently issued a report targeting Jiang Zemin’s family
Following this reiteration of the Crown Group, China Daily revealed on Feb. 16 the real reason why Ant Group’s plan to go public last year was halted by the CCP authorities.
Citing more than a dozen Communist Party officials and government advisers, the newspaper said that the authorities were concerned about financial system risks, but there was another important reason: the Ant Group’s complex shareholding structure and those who were expected to benefit from what would have been the world’s largest IPO were making Beijing increasingly uneasy.
The report said that a few weeks before Ant Group’s IPO, an investigation by authorities found that behind the layers of opaque investment vehicles that hold stakes in Ant Group is a coterie of well-connected powerful Communist Party figures, including Jiang Zhicheng, the eldest grandson of former Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin, and Li Botan, the son-in-law of Jia Qinglin, a former member of the Jiang faction’s Politburo Standing Committee, who pose a potential challenge to Xi Jinping and his inner circle.
The real reason why Ant Group’s plan to go public last year was called off by CCP authorities was revealed to be the complex shareholding structure behind Ant Group, which involves several powerful CCP families. (Screenshot from the Wall Street Journal’s website)
The investigation found that Boyu Capital, founded by Jiang Zhicheng, holds a roundabout stake in Ant through a private equity fund called Beijing Jingguan. Li Botan, on the other hand, became a hidden shareholder of Ant through his control of Beijing Zhaodu Investment, Tibetan Hongde Century Investment, Fuqing Linsheng No. 3 Investment, and Shanghai Zhongfu.
About 1 week later, this media outlet revealed the movement of Boyu Capital again.
On Feb. 22, China Daily quoted informed sources as saying that Boyu Capital, the private equity firm of Jiang Zemin’s family, had moved some of its operations from its Hong Kong headquarters to Singapore, and that two of the company’s co-founders had also moved to Singapore.
The newspaper quoted “sources within the Chinese Communist Party” as saying that the reason for the move was that “Xi Jinping has weakened the influence of retired seniors in the process of centralizing power, and these seniors are trying to steer decisions in their favor. “As Xi Jinping gradually dominates, the influence of the aging Jiang Zemin has weakened, and when Jiang dies, it could further change the power structure within the party, making his family and cronies more vulnerable to purges.”
According to current affairs commentator Li Linyi, the CCP’s infighting tends to intensify as Xi Jinping becomes more and more powerful within the CCP. In a short period of time, the China Daily report touched on each of the two major factions within the CCP, namely Xi Jinping’s faction and Jiang Zemin’s faction. The ones who are in the forefront are Xi’s cousin and Jiang’s grandson, and it cannot be ruled out that someone within the CCP is feeding them.
Li Linyi said that since the beginning of Xi’s rise to power, the two sides have been fighting for political status and power, which ended with the defeat of Jiang’s faction, including the arrest of Zhou Yongkang and other senior officials. Now, due to Xi’s left turn, Xi and Jiang’s interests in the economic sphere clash fiercely, as evidenced by the re-burst of news about the Crown Group, Xi preventing Jiang’s grandson from raking in money through investments in the Ant Group, and Boyu Group transferring funds to Singapore.
Jiang Zemin’s family continues to rake in money in China
Although Boyu Capital has moved some of its operations to Singapore, it now continues to rake in money in China.
A Reuters report on Feb. 24 cited three people familiar with the matter as saying that Boyu Capital is raising a new China-focused fund with a target of raising as much as $6 billion.
The dollar-denominated fund, the fifth and largest of Boyu Capital’s funds, is likely to close in the near future, one of the sources said.
Alvin Jiang, son of Jiang Mianheng, founded the Hong Kong-based private equity fund Boyu Capital in 2010. Over the past 10 years, Boyu Capital has turned the Jiang family’s political connections into a huge business fortune.
Hong Kong tightens money laundering rules at a sensitive time
On Feb. 14, about a week before reports emerged that Boyu Capital had moved its business to Singapore, news broke that Hong Kong was planning to take stricter measures against money laundering.
According to the Financial Times, the Hong Kong government is studying revising the requirement for foreign financial institutions or advisors to check the accounts of their politically connected persons (PEPs) from the current requirement of only “PEPs outside China to PEPs outside Hong Kong”.
This would also mean stricter anti-money laundering scrutiny of the bank account transactions of Chinese Communist Party officials in Hong Kong in the future.
According to the report, the rule change will make it more difficult for anyone associated with the Chinese Communist Party to transfer funds to or within Hong Kong without having their identity, public functions, associates and relatives checked.
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