Exiled tycoon Guo Wengui ordered staff to commit fraud to get big loans, court told
Three top managers say Guo ordered them to fake documents to get a loan from Agricultural Bank of China. They will face sentencing at later date
Three executives of the flagship company of fugitive Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui pleaded guilty to fraud charges on Friday in a court hearing in the northeastern port city of Dalian.
Yang Ying, the chief financial officer of Beijing Pangu Investment Company Limited, Lu Tao, its deputy general manager, and Xie Honglin, a financial manager, had been charged with obtaining loans using fraudulent documents, according to a notice posted by the Xigang District People’s Court in Dalian.
Lu and Xie had also been accused of buying foreign currency by fraudulent means. They will be sentenced at a later date.
At issue is a 3.2 billion yuan loan (US$470 million) that Pangu secured from the Agricultural Bank of China between 2009 and 2010. The Beijing News reported earlier that the loan had played a part in the downfall of the former chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, Xiang Junbo, who was Agricultural Bank’s chairman at the time of the loan.
In the hearing, which concluded around lunchtime, prosecutors accused Guo of instructing the three executives to produce fake contracts, company stamps and other materials to apply for the loan, which was ostensibly to be used to fund interior finishing work at Pangu Plaza, a dragon-shaped building near the Olympic park in Beijing.
Pangu also provided a fake invoice for 3.2 billion yuan from a company that was supposed to carry out the project, the indictment said.
Prosecutors said Pangu paid off the loan and interest by the end of 2014, but the loan was not used for the purpose stated in the contract.
Lu testified in court that Guo had instructed him to make fake company stamps. Yang said that Guo had given her the fake invoice, which Guo had bought from somewhere. She said 1.6 billion yuan of the loan was used to buy a majority stake in mainland brokage Minzu Securities, while 600 million yuan was transferred to Hong Kong.
Two months ago mainland media had released a video confession by Yang, in which she appeared in prison clothes and with her hands cuffed. She said in the video that Guo had ordered her to fabricate financial documents to obtain the loan from Agricultural Bank.
The charge of fraudulently acquiring foreign currency centred on Guo’s purchase of a private jet in Hong Kong, according to the indictment.
In 2012, Guo sought to buy a second private jet in the name of a Hong Kong company called World Century Limited. To pay for it, Lu and Xie applied for foreign currency to the value of US$13.5 million at a Construction Bank branch in Beijing, claiming that it was for the purchase of furniture for World Century. They also produced a fake contract and invoice for import of the furniture, the prosecutors said.
Xie said in court that Lu told him it was Guo’s decision to purchase the foreign exchange. Xie said he realised at the time that it was against the rules, but he did not think it would break the law.
Guo had previously strongly denied any irregularities over the loan, saying that he had paid back all the capital and interest to the bank well before the deadline.
In a live streamed interview with overseas Chinese media Mingjing on Friday morning from New York, before the hearing, Guo said he had not yet seen the indictment or other documents related to the case. But he said he had got some bits of information from pretrial meetings.
“I was baffled after reading it ... It was completely different from the truth as I know it,” he said. He said he did not want to make too many comments about the case because it was still being heard, but he did protest strongly about the charge of illegal purchase of foreign currency.
“I was very surprised by the charge ... it is out of the question that I would buy foreign currency through fraudulent means,” he said.
Guo, a property developer with close ties to former deputy state security minister Ma Jian, is wanted by Beijing over allegations of corruption, and is subject to an Interpol “red notice”, which is a request to Interpol member states to locate and provisionally arrest an individual pending extradition.
Additional reporting by Nectar Gan
