Exclusive | Chinese tycoon Li Jianhua fights daughter over Canada real estate fortune in lawsuits depicting knife violence, fraud and corporate turmoil
- The former Chinese politician denies ‘each and every allegation’ by daughter Carol Li Xiaoqi in their battle over Vancouver assets worth millions
- She says he brandished a knife in a confrontation over dying wife’s shares, while he says daughter fraudulently had him sign English documents he could not read
Tycoon Li Jianhua once planned to live next door to his daughter in Vancouver after he retired from a career that has brought him political prestige and great wealth in China.
Two multimillion-dollar mansions were built on a steep and wooded hillside overlooking Vancouver and the Salish Sea, side by side in the exclusive British Properties neighbourhood.
It was a fitting location for the former deputy in the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament – in a corporate profile he called himself a “child of the mountains”, a nod to his ethnic Hakka origins in a semirural part of Guangdong province.
Carol Li Xiaoqi proclaimed “devotion and filial piety” to her father. He declared “love and affection” for his only child.
But instead of living out his days beside his daughter, widowed Li Jianhua, 65, is battling her in Canadian courts over a C$19 million (US$14.1 million) Vancouver real estate fortune, amid unproven and untested accusations of fraud and violence. Li denies his daughter’s claims; she denies his counterclaims.
The conflict, depicted in legal documents obtained by the South China Morning Post, sheds light on upheaval at Guangdong Weihua Corporation (GW Co), the publicly listed Chinese wood-products company that was once an offshoot of Li Jianhua’s Guangdong Weihua Group (GW Group).