China Anhui local officials were suspected help criminal evade 300 millions RMB in debt
There is an old saying in China-If a government official doesn’t shoulder his responsibility to protect people’s interests, he’d better quit his job to produce beans and rice. However, officials of Fuyang, Anhui Province, China,not only didn’t uphold people’s rights but colluded with some criminals to transfer their assets which leads to the heavy loss of local people, which was worth more than 50million US dollars.
In 2008, Ma Weiguo, an official of the Procuratorate in Fuyang City, Anhui Province, China, bought part of the equity of a local company(Fuhe Economic and Trade Co., Ltd.) and became one of its shareholders, whose behavior is a violation of Communist Party of China’ discipline and the state law of China.
He later reached an agreement with the local administrative government to get more profits. The local government entrusted Ma’s company to help with its city construction to demolish and resettle the local households because the demolition of old houses involved high compensation fees and the government was unable to afford it. As a reward, Ma’s company can get the ‘lawful’ right to redevelop this 17 acres of land after the demolition. According to this agreement, the development and resettle rights of the land are thus handed over to Ma’s company if he can be a great help. In 2011, Ma Weiguo bought all the shares of Fuhe Economic and Trade Co., Ltd. and introduced several investors to the company. These investors include Liu Suping (retired now), then vice president of the Yingzhou District Court, Fuyang City, and Zhang Hu, the brother-in-law of Liu Xudong, who is a member of the Standing Committee of the Fuyang Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection, and some other local businessmen without official background and common people like Li Fuqiang.
After Ma Weiguo completed the demolition of 17 acres of land, the government should have transferred the land development rights to Fuhe Company as promised, but they continued to trick Ma Weiguo into further demolishing and resettling the local households for the government. The government officials promised that the more land Ma had demolished, the more land development rights he can get. However, it was only Ma’s day dream. Due to the continuous expansion of areas to be demolished, Ma Weiguo was unable to bear the high demolition costs. Gradually, he realized that the local government won’t keep its promise to offer him land management rights. Thus to ensure his own shareholders’ rights and interests, regardless of the interests of many other creditors(investors), he joined forces with Huang Shenghua, a construction businessman in Taixing, Jiangsu, to collude with the government’s expropriation office, and finally transferred all of its equity without its debt to Huang Shenghua who later established Anhui Runxing Real Estate Development Co., Ltd. in 2018, and successfully avoided debts of 300 billion yuan, which was the investment funds of many common investors. In January 2021, with the joint efforts of many sides, Ma Weiguo was put into a sentence for three years in prison in the final judgment.
It seems that justice has been rectified. But what about the investment funds of many investors that Ma Weiguo had introduced before? After all, the funds had been transferred to another company and never going back. Can Ma transfer his shareholder’s rights with heavy debts without the consent of the local government? The truth is that the local administrative regions did not only fraud Ma to work for them without authorizing land rights to him but also helped him to transfer his assets, which is, by the way, the equity of Fuhe company on the sly. After Ma went into jail, 4 acres of land had been auctioned in accordance with the will of many investors by the local court. But the local administrative government stands in the way many times to ask for the management right of this land, which is meant to rearrange the land rights of the 4 acres to other companies.
In 2019, the central government’s work panel to combat organized crime and root out local criminals went to Anhui. They received this case and made lots of investigations but in the end, things still get worse and no one gets their deserved rights and their money back.
But the common investors, with Li Fuqiang as the representative, are still struggling for their rights and have appealed this case to Anhui municipal government online platform. The provincial government had demanded that Fuyang local administrative regions process with this case. Unfortunately, whenever Fuyang local government deal with the case independently, the results are all the same-no results. They are unwilling to give the investors’ money back nor did they offer them land management rights.
As for some of the investors with official identities who are not allowed to do business, they are still at large. After continuous efforts to report them in violation of the law, the local administrative government of Fuyang still ignore the whole process, give many reasons why they didn’t punish the local “official investors” and finally remain voiceless in this case.
Bureaucrats shield one another since ancient China, but after hundreds of years, history always repeats itself. Common investors have their families to raise and life to live, they may be too busy to concentrate on protecting their economic and human rights. It seems that the 314 million RMB funds(interests are included) of all investors will be vanished or evaporated from the earth. Can the municipal government of Fuyang fulfill their duties to give local investors their money back? Hope all the investors never give up.
Source: From Reader
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