Tycoon son of former senior Jiangsu official ‘linked to group of fallen officials’

The son of a powerful retired Jiangsu cadre has been linked to several officials who held key positions across the north and east mainland before they tumbled amid graft suspicions, a leading financial news outlet has reported.

Caixin yesterday laid out how real estate tycoon Zhao Jin received help from his father, Zhao Shaolin, in establishing his first property company – at age 21 – which grew into a business empire.

“Whenever junior Zhao wanted a pot of land, Zhao Shaolin would show up and settle the deal,” Caixin quoted a source as saying. “Every project had his father in it. He would transfer the land [to his son] from others’ hands.”

Zhao Jin, 42, was detained in July, the Tianjin banking regulatory commission said at the time. Three months later, national graft-busters took away his father, a career cadre who rose from Nanjing’s Communist Youth League in the early 1980s, to mayor of Huaiyin city before being appointed secretary-general of the Jiangsu party committee.

Caixin did not name the father’s superiors, but official information shows he served as aide to former vice-premier Hui Liangyu and current Vice-President Li Yuanchao, when they were the province’s party chiefs.

Nanjing property developer sources told Caixin the father gave his son significant help when he first ventured into business. Within a few years, Zhao Jin had set up more than 20 companies in the city, and in the following decade, his interests stretched out across Jiangsu, Tianjin, Shandong, Hebei and Zhejiang.