Vanished Chinese Billionaire Set to Face Criminal Trial in Shanghai
By Keith Zhai, June 9, 2022, WSJ

The trial, if it takes place, could bring to a conclusion
one of the most sensational and confounding episodes in Chinese
leader Xi Jinping’s long-running campaign to rein in the country’s business tycoons. Mr. Xiao was taken from his home in Hong Kong’s
Four Seasons Hotel, where he had lived for several years in a
serviced apartment, by a group of human smugglers, who rolled him
out of the hotel in a wheelchair and then spirited him into mainland
China, the people familiar with the case said. After rumors of his
abduction began to spread, Hong Kong police confirmed that Mr. Xiao
had crossed the border but said they didn’t know under what circum-
stances. Tomorrow Group Holding Ltd. Co., the company Mr. Xiao founded, initially said he was receiving medical treatment abroad.

The billionaire’s disappearance fed fears among Hong Kong businessmen
about Beijing’s willingness to violate the “one country, two systems” framework that had allowed the former British colony to largely run
its own affairs. Since then, China’s leadership has grown more
aggressive in remaking the Asian financial hub, using a new national
security law to smother dissent there and moving to install a former
police officer as its next chief executive.

Mr. Xiao, a 1990 graduate of China’s elite Peking University and self- proclaimed devotee of American stock wizard Warren Buffett, built his
initial fortune by investing in brokerage firms, banks and insurers
just before they took off. He later expanded into real estate and
agriculture. Xiao’s business empire has been dismantled by Chinese authorities since his disappearance. In 2020, financial regulators in
Beijing said they had taken over four insurers, two trust firms, two securities firms and a futures company that together were worth hundreds
of billions of dollars. The companies were mostly, if not all, connected
to Xiao’s Tomorrow Group, which said that year that it was cooperating
with the government in a restructuring of the conglomerate.

The 50-year-old Xiao is among a number of high-profile Chinese businessmen whom Beijing has targeted amid a wide-ranging anticorruption campaign.
The Chinese leader’s focus on financiers began following a stock-market crash in 2015 that rattled Beijing. Guo Guangchang, the chairman of
financial conglomerate Fosun International Ltd. & another admirer of Buffett, shook the business world when he briefly disappeared in late 2015. The
company didn’t give details of his absence beyond saying he was assisting authorities with an unspecified investigation. Xu Xiang, a star Chinese
fund manager, was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison for stock manipulation
in connection with the 2015 crash just a week before Xiao vanished.
In recent years, the government has broadened the scope of its scrutiny, turning its attention to the country’s powerful internet tycoons and other business titans it sees as emblems of private capital run amok.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/vanished-chinese-billionaire-set-to-face-criminal-trial-in-shanghai-11654787300

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