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The Chinese regime's hidden elite companies in tax havens

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China lives the largest and most rapidly changing country that has experienced in recent decades. The process of opening and reform has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, but social gap has reached a dangerous level. Rapid enrichment of elites has eroded the credibility of communist leaders, whose promises to end inequality and corruption to a new scandal now face: the massive use of tax havens by their immediate families. COUNTRY, along with other international media such as The Guardian, BBC, Le Monde, SÃ_ddeutsche Zeitung Asahi Shimbun or has had access to the evidence base obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reveals that at least 13 relatives top leaders of the regime, including the current president, Xi Jinping, and former prime ministers Wen Jiabao and Li Peng, and 15 big businessmen and large state companies have remained very active in tax shelters.

Records of these opaque societies analyzed in collaboration with the consortium come from a leak of more than two million records two managers (Portcullis Trustnet and Commonwealth Trust) operating in the BVI. The choice of this Caribbean archipelago by the Chinese elite is not surprising: the British overseas territory was the second direct investor in China in 2010 - year to set records in database - filtered, behind only Hong Kong. With just 27,000 inhabitants, has registered more than one million companies, 40% from China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Examination of the data shows how many members of the Communist elite have opened offshore companies having wrought enormous fortunes in the shadow of the regime. This practice corroborates Chinese systemic weaknesses: the three decades since Deng Xiaoping abandoned the central planned economy to capitalism and jumped under the sole government of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have disproportionately enriched a privileged sector population due to its proximity to power.

The documents that arrive until early 2010 to see how allow these family plots, belonging to the highest Communist lineages, have taken advantage of the opacity of the British Virgin Islands to send money outside the usual circuits through companies created for themselves or their participation in other already established. This facilitates hiding assets and money of official control (China limits the movement of capital abroad than $ 50,000 per year) and even benefit from tax privileges to foreign investors Beijing.

In the data analyzed contained at least 13 members of the so-called red nobility, ie, relatives of the leaders of the Communist leadership in active, retired or deceased (see charts on pages 4 and 5). Among them are the brother of Xi Jinping, the son and the son of the former prime minister, Wen Jiabao, the daughter of his predecessor, Li Peng, a son of the late Deng Xiaoping, and the grandson of the legendary commander of the revolution Su Yu. These 13 people appear linked to at least 25 companies as shareholders or directors.

For Jiagui Deng, Qi Qiaoqiao husband, older sister of current Chinese president, is emblematic of the new China with his partner built a real estate empire in Hong Kong and Shenzhen in just 20 years. Wen Yunsong, son of former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, created in a tax haven company Trend Gold Consultants. An investigation by The New York Times published in 2012 puts the family fortune Wen Jiabao 2,700 million.

Another aristocrat who has operated in tax shelters is Li Xiaolin, the daughter of former premier Li Peng, who bloodily suppressed the Tiananmen democracy demonstrations. The daughter is known in his country as Power Queen (Queen of Energy) that controls one of the Chinese electric monopolies, and that flaunt their wealth and influence shamelessly.

Much of the offshore activity of the red nobility corresponds to the time when his kindred exercised power. This applies, for example, with the son and the son of former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, founders of a company in the British Virgin Islands in the mandate of the father (2003-2013). In the case of the current president, Xi Jinping, himself a prince, the name by which the descendants of senior leaders and former leaders of CCP - are known, the incorporation offshore coincides with his time as vice president (2008-2013) although the creation of real ownership of his brother Deng Jiagui preceded his arrival to the presidency in March last year. The database does not include the chairman and the former prime minister.

Also included in records at least fifteen business tycoons. Many stars of the dramatic economic turmoil experienced by China in the past two decades. This is the case of Ma Huateng, founder of Tencent, the giant digital messaging, with an estimated $ 10,100 million (7,400 million) fortune.

HOME has maintained diplomatic contacts with China authorities to verify the information concerning the family of Chinese leaders. The Beijing government, as has been its practice to other media revelations of this kind, has declined to respond. The cases are published from the research have been tested and this paper has documented similar registers.

Sources close to the Chinese government contends that opening offshore companies is not linked to a phenomenon of corruption or criminal and insist that it is a common business practice among Chinese entrepreneurs to compete with foreign firms investing in China and the Government favors with tax exemptions. For the same conditions, again according to these sources, local magnates open societies in the British Virgin Islands, from there forward the money to China and converted into foreign capital, receive tax benefits. This practice has been greatly reduced, according to the sources, who claim that none of the documents directly involves Chinese authorities, but only relatives who are entrepreneurs. In this line, suggesting that the light output of the data impairs leaders fighting corruption in China.

The managing Portcullis Trustnet Commonwealth Trust and have declined to review this newspaper about the leak.

- As the latest research from The New York Times or another of the American news agency Bloomberg, on the accumulation of assets of the Communist elite have led to the imposition of barriers to journalism of the media and blocking their digital editions in China. In the past year, the Chinese regime has launched a crusade against corruption, waste and unjust enrichment of the political and business classes.

Filtration exposes the collaboration of important financial institutions such as UBS and Credit Suisse, the flow of money to tax havens. But mostly reveals the ideological split of the Chinese system, inside the country acts as a fierce guardian of economic discipline, but on the outside becomes a compulsive user of services and privileges that provide the opacity of tax havens.

Wikileaks cables published by this newspaper in 2010 and four other international headers already gave some clues about the suspect enrichment families of top Chinese leaders. A secret report sent to Washington from the consulate in Shanghai in 2007 reported statements from a source that states that " the family of Wen is a remarkable political headache for the [ then] Prime Minister " and " disgust " with the same their business associates.

In another cable, an old friend of the current president Xi Jinping holds that "it is not corrupt and is not at all interested in money," but could be " corrupted by power." The source described Xi Yuanping - brother of the leader -like " rich " and highlights his habit of " displaying jewelry and designer clothes."

One of the most active sectors in the Chinese building firms in tax havens is the oil, according to the leaked documents. Trinity Energy - Petrochina, Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) - is spearheading and sustaining economic strength of the country and its leaders are among the most influential in the local elite. So much so, that many experts claim that senior energy industry have their own group within the apparatus of the CCP. Many of the leaders who make up the "oil faction" have been trained in Western universities and have extensive international experience. And although they are appointed by the Politburo, have autonomy to manage businesses both financially and strategically. The database shows that oil and its principals established dozens of companies in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore jurisdictions between 1995 and 2008, although there is no evidence that they engaged in illegal acts.

The documents on opaque activities of Chinese elite refer to one of the fundamental problems of the Asian giant: the sharp increase in social inequality. Communist leaders fear the unrest and protests that the unequal distribution of income can lead to the point of having turned the issue into a real political priority. Nevertheless, the accumulation of wealth in few hands is growing: the number of billionaires in China in a decade has gone from zero to 315. And the influx of easy money to political elites is such that 153 of the 1,000 people included in the list of the richest people in China are members of the National People's Congress or its advisory body. In this line, the 20 most affluent members of this assembly gathering in 2012 equity of 62,200 million, ie 46 times the 20 U.S. Congressmen wealthy, according to Roll Call, a skilled information in Washington politics.

Besides being popular because of indignation, illicit capital flight is a factor that promotes inequality, because it reduces the capacity to collect and therefore redistribution by the state. Precise quantification of the hidden capital movements is impossible today, but the nonprofit organization Global Financial Integrity, a center of American studies, has calculated that in 2011, the latest year available - illegally left China some 150,000 million dollars, almost 12 % of Spanish GDP.

 Tags: Chinese, companies, elite, havens, Hidden, regimes, tax

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