The Canadian embassy reported Tuesday that Chinese officials prevented Canadian government representatives from attending the trial of Chinese-Canadian billionaire Xiao Jianhua.
The embassy's public diplomacy counselor, Nadia Scipio del Campo, disclosed in an emailed statement to reporters, "Canada made multiple requests to join the trial hearings."
Xiao, who went missing in Hong Kong five years ago, was scheduled to stand trial in China on Monday, the embassy said in an earlier statement. Canadian consulate officers had pressed for consular access.
When asked about Xiao's trial at a press briefing on Monday, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, stated that he was unaware of the situation.
Xiao, who was born in China and is believed to have ties to Communist Party elite, has not been seen in public since 2017, when he was questioned during a state-led crackdown on multinational corporations.
A source close to the tycoon said that Xiao was carried away from a Hong Kong hotel in a wheelchair with his head covered in the early hours of the day he went missing.
At the time, Xiao placed 32nd on the 2016 Hurun China rich list, the Chinese equivalent of the Forbes list, with an estimated net worth of $5.97 billion.
At the heart of Xiao's empire is Tomorrow Holdings Co., a financial services firm.
As part of a crackdown on the risks presented by financial conglomerates, nine of the group's affiliated institutions were seized in July 2020.
To "further boost risk disposal activities and defuse financial hazards," regulators extended the one-year takeover period of nine financial institutions by another year in 2021.The extended detention will conclude on July 16.
The 2019 seizures were preceded by a regulatory takeover of Baoshang Bank, a lender formerly held by Tomorrow. Authorities indicated significant credit risks.
The institution, which had formerly operated on a national scale, was transformed into a considerably smaller lender in its native region of Inner Mongolia in northern China.
In recent years, a number of executives at major Chinese corporations have been investigated or prosecuted as part of President Xi Jinping's broader anti-corruption campaign, which has also targeted politicians and bankers.
Jiang Jiemin, the former head of China National Petroleum Corp, was jailed for 16 years in 2015 for bribery and abuse of power. He was among those who had fallen from favor.
