China’s Solution To “Tyrannical” Billionaires Who Harm The Economy: Execution

In some countries, the ‘solution’ the state chooses for its ignominous billionaire class of inequality-garnering, economy-wrecking individuals is to either a) turn one’s back for a brief enough moment as to allow the tyrant to leave the country in search of a golden beach upon which to lament how great a trade being long European bonds would have been’ or b) enhance their wealth further on a quid pro quo basis. In China, the ‘treatment’ for corrupt billionaires who love casinos, cigars, and luxury cars is much simpler… execution.

As The Telegraph reports,

A Chinese billionaire famed for his love of casinos, cigars and luxury cars was executed on Monday in one of the most dramatic episodes yet in president Xi Jinping’s war on corruption.

Liu Han, a 49-year-old mining tycoon once worth at least £4.2 billion, was one of five alleged mafia kingpins to receive the death penalty after being convicted of offences including gun-running and murder.

The part-time God Father “tyrannised local people and seriously harmed the local economic and social order,” Xinhua, China’s official news agency, said in a brief dispatch announcing the execution.

Prior to his death Liu was allowed a final “meeting” with his family, Xinhua added.

Liu Han made his money in construction and went on to become the chairman of the Hanlong Group, a Chengdu-based mining firm with interests in Australia, Africa and the United States.

Worth an estimated 40 billion yuan (£4.2 billion) at his peak, the tycoon was a vocal and extravagant regular in the business pages, boasting of his diamond watches and fleet of Bentleys, Ferraris and Rolls-Royces.

In a 2010 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Liu bragged of plans to buy a billion tons of uranium. “Liu Han always wins. Liu Han never loses,” said the billionaire, who was reportedly wearing a knee-length mink jacket.

Yet for all his business acumen, Liu’s parallel life as an “evil gangster” proved his undoing.

The disgraced billionaire was arrested in 2013 and sentenced to death last May, with a court in Hubei province declaring him head of “a cabal of ferocious gangsters”.

Xinhua said Liu was “a ruthless underworld kingpin” and claimed one of his gangs had been found in possession of three grenades, 20 guns, 677 bullets, 2,163 shotgun cartridges and more than 100 knives.

On Monday, state media spun Liu’s execution as the latest victory in Xi Jinping’s war on corruption.

The tycoon’s mafia group had been “harboured and indulged by government officials,” Xinhua claimed.

Yet sceptics believe the billionaire’s execution is merely the latest chapter in a political purge of Mr Xi’s rivals.

Liu had connections to Zhou Yongkang, the disgraced former security chief who was recently expelled from the Communist Party and is awaiting sentencing for corruption.

Andrew Wedeman, a political scientist who studies corruption in China, said Xi Jinping faced a tough juggling act to convince Chinese citizens he was successfully slaying powerful and corrupt “tigers” such as Liu and Mr Zhou without simply exposing a Party that was rotten to the core.

“It is a tricky business because as you hang more pelts from the walls of Zhongnanhai [the leadership compound in Beijing] … do people say, “Wow you are a great tiger hunter!”? Or do they go, “Oh my God! There are an awful lot of tigers out there in the hills!”?

“He is walking a tightrope,” Prof Wedeman said of the Communist Party leader.

Mr Liu, who was executed alongside his brother and three alleged accomplices, denied the charges against him.

“I’ve been framed,” he shouted during his sentencing last year, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

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One word… “Corzine”

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Just how deep does the corruption run in China? Well this should give us some idea…

• *ONE-THIRD OF MACAU’S VIP CASINO ROOMS OUT OF BUSINESS: MING PAO

From the rising star to this in a year as graft and money-laundering crush an entire economy.