More than five years after his mysterious disappearance from a luxury hotel in Hong Kong, a Chinese Canadian billionaire and onetime trusted financier to China’s political elite has been put on trial in a case that epitomizes the ruling Communist Party’s efforts to rein in an earlier era of freewheeling capitalism.
Chinese authorities have not released details of the charges against the financier, Xiao Jianhua. The Canadian Embassy in Beijing said in an emailed statement that it was aware of Monday’s trial, and that it was monitoring the case closely. The embassy added that it was providing consular services to Xiao’s family and would continue to press for consular access, but it declined to provide more information out of concern for Xiao’s privacy, it said.
There was no immediate indication of how long Xiao’s trial would last. Chinese courts rarely find defendants not guilty, meaning that he will almost certainly be convicted and sentenced.