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https://scmp.com/news/world/article/1840168/michael-ching-mo-yeung-wanted-china-wins-canadian-court-bid-have-refugee
World

Michael Ching Mo Yeung, wanted by China, wins Canadian court bid to have refugee case reheard

Judge says panel that rejected Vancouver property developer's refugee claim acted unfairly by relying on Chinese court rulings

Michael Ching Mo Yeung will have his claim for refugee status in Canada reheard. Ching says he fears he may be tortured if sent back to China to face graft charges. Photo: SCMP Picture

Vancouver property developer Michael Ching Mo Yeung, who is wanted by China for alleged corruption, has won a key legal victory in Canada, with a federal judge ordering that Ching’s bid for refugee status be reconsidered.

Ching - who is wanted under the name Cheng Muyang and is the son of the late disgraced Hebei governor Cheng Weigao – was unfairly treated by a panel of Canada’s Refugee Protection Division, according to Mr Justice Yvan Roy, in a ruling handed down in Winnipeg on Wednesday.

Roy said the refugee panel’s decision on October 31 last year, in which Ching was denied protection on the basis that there were “serious reasons” to believe he had committed a significant crime, relied too heavily on Chinese court findings. But the evidence was either unavailable to the panel, or was “fuzzy and third-hand”, Roy said.

“To summarise, the issue is not whether or not the findings of a foreign court are to be discarded completely,” Roy said in his written judgment. “They are not. However, I fail to see how serious reasons can come solely from the findings of another court without having a clear understanding of what the evidence against the applicant was.”

Roy’s ruling against Canada’s immigration ministry deemed that Ching’s refugee case must be reheard by a different Refugee Protection Division panel. A spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment that was lodged outside office hours.

Ching, 45, is the president and CEO of Mo Yeung International Enterprise, a major Vancouver property development firm. His identity as Cheng Muyang was revealed by the South China Morning Post in April.

He was granted permanent residency in Canada in 1996, but has repeatedly been denied citizenship, prompting a series of court cases. A Chinese national, he frequently travelled to the mainland until about 2000, Roy noted.

Ching says he fears false charges, imprisonment and torture if he is returned to China, and thus deserves refugee status.

Wednesday’s ruling outlined the Chinese case against Ching, which alleges he took part in the embezzlement of about RMB5.35million, supposedly pocketing RMB2.8million himself.

According to the Chinese courts’ version of events outlined by Roy, Ching allegedly acted as a middleman in a 1997 deal in which the Hebei provincial government bought a property in Beijing. He introduced the broker selling the property to Wang Fuyou, a Hebei official who served under Ching’s father and who was in charge of procuring the site. However, the sale price was supposedly inflated beyond what was sought by the property’s owners, with the difference pocketed by Ching and the broker.

Yet Roy said he was “hard pressed to understand what is the evidence that … [Ching] was a co-conspirator”. He highlighted a lack of documentary evidence cited by the refugee panel.

“I do not mean to suggest that the evidence does not exist. Rather it is that the record does not contain any indication of what the evidence of money transferred to the applicant on account of the transaction ruled by the Chinese courts to be fraudulent can be,” Roy said.

Both Wang and the broker were convicted of embezzlement in two Chinese court rulings in 2002, but Ching himself was not on trial, Roy said.

Ching was represented in his Federal Court hearing by David Matas, the same renowned human rights lawyer who acted for Lai Changxing in his unsuccessful battle for refugee status in Canada. Lai was eventually deported to China in 2011 and was convicted of smuggling and corruption charges. He is serving a life sentence.

Ching’s father, Cheng Weigao, was himself investigated for corruption and subsequently expelled from the Communist Party in 2003. He died in 2010.