Higher Court Upholds Verdict on Entrepreneur Charged with FraudHubei Provincial Higher People's Court Tuesday rejected an appeal by Mou Qizhong, a businessman charged with fraud, and upheld the verdict given to him at the first-instance trial.On May 30, Mou (previously spelt Mu) was sentenced by the Intermediate People's Court of Wuhan City, Hubei province, to life imprisonment for business fraud in a first-instance trial and was also deprived of political rights for life. Mou was given a fine of five million yuan. Mou, 58, is the former president of the Land (also spelt Nande) Economic Group, a large private company based in the port city of Tianjin in north China. He used to be known as "the richest man" in the Chinese mainland. However, his company had nearly collapsed before he was detained on January 7,1999 and then arrested on February 8 that year. Mou was found guilty of signing false contracts. In order to obtain financing from banks, he signed contracts with an Australian company to import goods. However, there were no goods to begin with. Mou used the contracts to obtain letters of credit from a bank in Hubei Province and withdrew more than 75 million US dollars with the letters of credit. He used some 22 million US dollars of the money to repay his company's debts. His fraudulent activities caused losses of 35.5 million US dollars to the bank. His three other complices were also sentenced on May 30. They include Yao Hong and Mou Chen, both of whom got three years' imprisonment and Mou Bo with two years in jail. Yao was also given five years' probation and Mou Bo was given three years' probation. After the first-instance trial, Mou Qizhong lodged an appeal against the verdict to Hubei Provincial Higher People's Court. After extensive investigations, the higher court concluded that the punishment given to Mou Qizhong by the Intermediate People's Court of Wuhan City is proper and should be carried out. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/english/ |