No bids for former luxury home of jailed Anbang chief Wu Xiaohui
- Three-day online auction fails to attract any serious interest for discounted Hangzhou garden villa
The three-day auction of the property in Hangzhou, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, ended on online shopping website Taobao on Thursday without a single offer.
The 460 square metre villa was owned by Wu Xiaohui, and minimum bidders were set at 62.5 million yuan (US$8.9 million), a discount on the property’s 89.214 million yuan valuation.
Taobao is owned by Alibaba, which also owns the South China Morning Post.
In its decision, the Shanghai No 1 Intermediate People’s Court also ordered that Wu’s billions in assets, including property, be confiscated.
The auction is one of a series to be held as part of those orders.
Founded in 2004 as a regional car insurance company, Anbang was virtually unknown until 2014 when it went on a buying spree, snapping up businesses in countries including Belgium, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Canada. It also bought the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel from Blackstone for nearly US$2 billion the same year.
Wu is being held at Baoshan Prison in Shanghai. Wu’s mother, Lin Xiangmei, has said on social media that Wu has been denied opportunities to meet family members since he was imprisoned.
But sources close to Wu’s family told the South China Morning Post that the authorities had recently allowed him to meet his younger brother and his conditions were “fair”.
The central government took control of Anbang in February last year, the same month that Wu was formally charged.
In September, four of Wu’s other villas were auctioned off by the court, for a total of 71 million yuan, about 40 per cent above the starting prices, according to court documents.
