One Billion Customers - James McGregor [61]
Lai had been a master at keeping his companies at arm’s length from the actual smuggling transactions, which were in the name of partner companies. Investigators never built a strong paper trail, instead mostly relying on confessions obtained by interrogating family members, employees, and arrested officials. In the end, it took a thousand investigators twenty months to compile the case against Lai. Chinese prosecutors said that Lai partnered with an array of companies owned by the Chinese military, the Fujian provincial government, the Xiamen city government, and various national police and national security agencies.
At first, Lai lived in a Vancouver mansion that he purchased for about $1.5 million. He had a driver and a big sport-utility vehicle at his disposal. But almost all of his money was tied up in Xiamen real estate, which the authorities had confiscated. When they also traced and froze his various bank accounts, Lai’s lifestyle deteriorated quickly. He moved his family into a three-bedroom apartment in a working-class section of Vancouver.
Armed with two new mobile phones, Lai worked his network in China, asking friends he had helped over the years to send him cash. He also established phone contact with his older brother, Lai Shuiqiang, who was trying to help Chinese authorities persuade Lai to come back to China. Investigators camping in Lai Shuiqiang’s home opened a regular dialogue with the fugitive, assuring him that he would be treated leniently if he returned. They tried, unsuccessfully, to get him to meet them in Singapore. Finally, three investigators and Lai’s eldest brother flew to Vancouver. They lied to the Canadian government, obtaining business visas by pretending to be a Chinese government business delegation. Lai talked to them for three days in their hotel rooms, which he paid for. They carried a written promise that he wouldn’t be executed, that his wife wouldn’t be arrested, and that part of his confiscated assets would be set aside for his children, who would be free to live where they wanted. Lai didn’t believe them. If he wasn’t executed outright, he told them, he would die a violent and unexplained death in jail.
The Chinese investigators refused to accept his novel argument that he hadn’t damaged China’s finances. “Although my company didn’t follow regulations strictly, I didn’t betray my country,” he told them. “I would never steal money from the treasury. I only made money before it went into the treasury. It hadn’t become the country’s money yet.”
Political Refugee or Common Crook?
The investigators went back to China empty-handed. Lai applied for refugee status in Canada on June 8, 2000, claiming that he had a “well-founded fear of persecution” because of his political opinions and his membership in a particular social group. He contended that he had been caught in a power struggle and that as a wealthy entrepreneur he is a member of a class of people in China that the government persecutes and discriminates against.
The Chinese government has put tremendous pressure on the Canadian government to return Lai to China. Canadian officials say the subject came up in every senior-level meeting. The Chinese could not understand why Canada didn’t simply turn over Lai.
“They never, never, never got it that we could not interfere in our own court system, that we could not force the outcome, right up to Zhu Rongji and the highest levels,” said a senior Canadian official who was a participant in many of the discussions. “It was beyond their comprehension. They just did not believe that we cannot tell our courts what to do.”
During all this time, and up until publication of this