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Shi Jiangtao

Death-row billionaire Yuan Baojing must have known he was playing his last card when he was visited by prosecutors in the northeastern rustbelt city of Liaoyang, in Liaoning province .

'On the evening of October 12, two days ahead of his scheduled execution, he provided some important evidence to officials from the Liaoyang city procurator's office,' said Liu Jiazhong, Yuan's lawyer.

'He accused a senior provincial cadre in charge of legislative affairs in Liaoning of corruption, which led to the halting of his execution.'

Mr Liu's explanation follows media speculation linking Yuan's miraculous escape to a report that the billionaire had offered to give up his enormous wealth.

The news quickly stirred up angry responses on the internet, with many accusing Yuan of buying his life with money and pointing their fingers at the tattered mainland legal system.

But the rise and fall of the low-profile 39-year-old tycoon had already attracted nationwide attention.

Born under a straw roof, Yuan's mysterious rags to riches story took off in the 1990s.  His fall from grace, after being implicated in an assassination plot early last year, was no less spectacular. He was condemned to death by the Liaoyang Intermediate People's Court early this year, with the sentence later approved by the Liaoning Provincial High Court.

Speculation started when Yuan's second wife, Zhuoma, a 40-year-old Tibetan dancer who teaches at the Central University for Nationalities,  told the mainland media shortly after his reprieve that the billionaire had named her and their three-year-old son as the heirs to his fortune.

'I met my husband on the morning of October 14,' she said in an interview with the Beijing-based People Weekly magazine. 'The reason that my husband has transferred his assets to me is he hopes I will donate them to society.'

She said Yuan had signed a legal document entrusting her and his lawyer to give his 40 per cent stake in an unspecified Indonesian oil company to the central government.

Mr Liu confirmed that Yuan had decided to give up his oil shares, worth an estimated 49.5 billion yuan. But he denied allegations that Yuan had made the offer in exchange for his life.

'No, it was not correct,' Mr Liu, from C & I Partners, told the South China Morning Post. 'I can tell you in a responsible way that the money was not the reason for the suspension of the death sentence. Mr Yuan had made the decision  days ahead of his scheduled execution.'

According to  mainland law, a death penalty can only be suspended for three reasons: the condemned person is pregnant, an error is found in the verdict, or the defendant 'exposes major criminal facts or renders other significantly meritorious service'.

The Liaoning government refused to confirm Mr Liu's statement.

Yuan was born in 1966, the third child in a poor worker's family of five children in  Liaoyang.

After graduating from the Chinese University of Political Science and Law in 1989, he joined the securities department of the Huairou branch of China Construction Bank, where he learned to trade stocks. He quit three years later and started his own business with 200,000 yuan.

According to the Xinhua-owned Oriental Outlook magazine, Yuan's wealth snowballed in the next four to five years as he became one of mainland's most successful market players.

In 1994 his business acquired more than 60 companies in a series of widely publicised deals which earned him a legendary reputation. People's Daily estimated the worth of his Jianhao Group, once the majority shareholder of about 30 listed companies, at more than three billion yuan in 1996.

Despite his immense wealth, Yuan maintained a low public profile and he was not included in 'China rich lists' published by magazines such as Fortune and Forbes.

The Intermediate People's Court in Liaoyang sentenced him to death in January for hiring his brother and cousins to murder a police officer who tried to blackmail him over an assassination plot, Xinhua said. Yuan had paid 160,000 yuan in 1996 to hire Wang Xing , then a Jianhao company employee and a former policeman in Liaoyang, to kill another man Yuan blamed for losing his company  90 million yuan in futures trading in Sichuan .

The assassination failed in early 1997 and Wang began blackmailing Yuan, threatening to reveal his plot if he did not lend him money.

Yuan then decided to get rid of Wang and paid his brother Yuan Baoqi  300,000 yuan to take care of the murder, Xinhua said.

Following a failed murder attempt in November 2001, in which Yuan Baojing's two cousins inflicted several serious knife wounds on Wang, he paid another 180,000 yuan to his cousins, who finally shot Wang dead outside his home in October 2003. His brother Yuan Baoqi, and Yuan Baosen , one of his two cousins, were also sentenced to death by the court. Yuan Baofu , another cousin, was given a suspended death sentence.

Although Yuan insisted he had been wronged and forced to confess, showing scars on his body to the court, his appeal against the death sentence was rejected by the Liaoyang court.

'It would be a grave mistake if Yuan was sentenced to death with the evidence that has been collected so far,' Mr Liu said. 'Conviction of a suspect must be based on hard evidence rather than his confession.'

Yuan is still living on borrowed time because the death sentence has not been reversed.

'The court said the death sentence was just postponed, which means he could still be executed at any time,' Mr Liu said.

He said he was very disappointed that the Liaoyang court had declined his requests to meet Yuan since October 18.

'The court said I could not visit Yuan Baojing because there was a ban from higher authorities,' Mr Liu said. 'His wife was also refused permission to visit him.

'They should at least show some respect for Mr Yuan's legal rights.'



Tycoon escapes execution ... for now