Lawyers for Chongqing entrepreneur Li Huaiqing have charged the police with framing charges to the prosecutor’s office and demanded that the case be heard in public in the second trial according to the law.
Chongqing private entrepreneur and billionaire Li Huaigeng is awaiting a second trial after being sentenced to 20 years in prison last November on four counts of inciting subversion of state power. Li’s wife, Bao Yan, recently filed a complaint against the task force handling Li’s case. Bao Yan said that the latest evidence of Chongqing police framing Li Huaqing has been submitted to the Supreme Court, in which case the case must be heard in open court in accordance with the law.
So far, Li Huaigang, a private entrepreneur and volunteer with “Handy Public Welfare” in Chongqing who has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, has been in custody for three years. According to rights.com, Li Huaqing’s wife Bao Yan, together with lawyer Wang Yu, filed a complaint with the Baoding City People’s Procuratorate in Hebei Province on March 18, and submitted a large amount of the latest evidence that the Deng Guolin and Tan Ping task force framed and persecuted Li Huaqing. Bao Yan said the case should be heard in open court in accordance with the law.
Judicial authorities refuse to hear the second trial in public
On Jan. 31, 2018, Li Huaiqing was detained by Chongqing police on “gang-related” charges, and hundreds of millions of yuan of property in his name was frozen. On November 20, 2020, Li was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Chongqing First Intermediate Court on four counts of inciting subversion of state power, fraud, extortion, and illegal detention.
In the letter of complaint submitted on the 18th, Bao Yan said that members of the task force, the former director of Chongqing Public Security Bureau Deng Guolin and the deputy head of the Chongqing Public Security Bureau Jiulongpo Branch Criminal Investigation Branch Tan Ping illegal appropriation and embezzlement of Li Huaiqing’s private property, which constitutes a criminal offense. In addition, the accusation letter shows that none of the evidence that had been released during the investigation of the case and that could prove the fact of Li Huaikeng’s private loans appeared in the trial of the first instance, and the task force headed by Deng Cullin was suspected of destroying evidence.
Bao Yan said in an interview with the station that it is an established fact that the authorities fabricated political charges to frame Li Huaqing and the task force illegally appropriated private property: “During the seizure and confiscation, more than ten million dollars worth of belongings in my safe (went missing), neither my husband nor I were present at the Time, and we were not given any list of the seizures later.” Bao Yan said that in addition to this, the task force also tortured Li Huaiqing to extract a confession, and used his young son as a threat to force Li Huaiqing to reveal the password to the safe and confess his guilt.
Our reporter called Wang Yu’s lawyer several times, but no one answered.
Notice of court appearance issued by Chongqing Intermediate Court to Li Huaigeng’s defense lawyer (RTHK website)
Lawyer: Refusal of public hearing for second trial means backroom dealings
Lai Jianping, a Canadian lawyer who has long followed Li Huaqing’s case, told RTHK that the chain of evidence in the first trial of Li’s case was incomplete, and that Li’s 20-year sentence was a typical political framing of private entrepreneurs by the Chinese Communist Party authorities: “It turns out that all the charges of involvement in blackmail, extortion and fraud cannot be established. Later, in order to ‘kill the chicken to show the monkey’ and demonstrate the ruler’s determination to crack down on private entrepreneurs with a shred of universal values, Li Huaigqing was given a ‘crime of incitement’.”
Lai Jianping was not surprised that Bao Yan accused the task force. He said it is common in China for case officers to know the law and break it in the investigation process, to fake the public interest, to detach themselves from the legal procedures and to seize and embezzle private property recklessly, which is essentially a robbery committed by bandits.
Bao Yan told the station that the Chongqing High Court did not respond to more than a dozen applications submitted by lawyers and refused to hold a second trial, all in order to close the case as soon as possible: “The evidence for this crime (of inciting subversion of state power) is the six peer-to-peer weibo messages between Li Huaiqing and his son and friends, and it is absurd to convict on the basis of this evidence. This case would have been adjudicated long ago if the evidence had been conclusive, and it has been delayed until now precisely because of the problems with the evidence.”
Lai Jianping also believes that the second trial in camera is a political trial that deprives the defendant of basic human rights: “In the process of prosecution and defense in the courtroom, whether there is evidence, what kind of evidence, what kind of legal provisions are quoted, if they are all made public, society will understand what is going on. Not being open means operating in the dark, saying you are guilty if you are guilty and guilty if you are not.”
Lai Jianping said that the authorities have already qualified Li Huaiqing’s case, and under this institutional premise, people at all levels of the judiciary will try their best to move closer to the highest decision in the process of investigating and hearing the case, convicting and sentencing from the strictest to the heaviest: “It is a race to do evil, to see who is more determined to enslave and oppress the common people and do it more effectively.”
According to Chinese media Caixin, last month, the head of Li Huaiqing’s task force and former public security chief of Chongqing, Deng Cullin, was indicted for serious job violations and alleged bribery crimes. Deng Cullin, who was alleged to have taken bribes for more than two decades, fell in June 2020.
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