Con artist engineers demolition of government offices

Information Times
November 18, 2008

The Guangzhou-based Information Times and many other newspapers featured con artist Wang Xiniu on the front page today.

Wang's handiwork made the news in Inner Mongolia back in May. On the morning of May 17, two government buildings in Hohhot were turned into two piles of rubble. An 8-story municipal government office building and an 11-story PSB office building, were demolished to make room for the "Golden Eagle International CBD Center," a skyscraper that would soar 169 meters into the air, making it the tallest building in western China.

At that time, the media reported on the precisely-controlled implosion as a feat of human engineering. "The number one hospital of Hohhot, only 100 meters away, was not affected," Xinhua reported.

Few could have foreseen that Hohhot's new landmark, a prestige project for the local government, would never be built. The "Golden Eagle" building turned out to be a scam masterminded by Wang Xiniu, known at the time as Zheng Ze, the president of a Hong Kong company called the Golden Eagle Group.

From the beginning, Wang carefully manipulated his image and won the trust of the local government. Reports say that Wang was often seen in his Cadillac limousine accompanied by eight body guards wearing black suits and sun glasses. Wang was also seen by many as generous philanthropist, as he was reported to have donated two million yuan to help the poor in a county in Sichuan Province.

Whether they were impressed by Wang's largess, or simply too excited by the big investment he promised, officials in Hohhot were easily convinced when Wang brought up his plan of building western China's tallest building in Hohhot. The officials promised to help him in any way they could, including blowing up their own offices.

After the first few months, construction was halted due to a shortage of funds. Wang, who had managed to raise money from various channels, including selling the building to property buyers before it was completed and delaying payment to construction contractors, couldn't sustain the expense any more.

A very successful explosion

In 2007, Wang was arrested by the police. It turned out that instead of being a businessman from Hong Kong, he was a former carpenter from Hubei Province. His "Golden Eagle Group" was a shell company registered in Hong Kong with HK$10,000 dollars in assets and not a single employee.

Further investigation revealed that Hohhot was not Wang's first victim: He played the same trick in 2001 in Yinchuan, the capital city of Ningxia Autonomous Region. In a string of scams conducted from 2001 to 2007, Wang fleeced banks, construction contractors, and private investors for a total of nearly 1.8 billion yuan. On August 21 this year, Wang was sentenced to life in prison for fraud. He recently lost his appeal.

Wang explained his strategy in a few choice quotes:

"Get in good with big leaders, hold up big banners, and make big money."

"Archimedes said that if you gave him a pivot point he could move the Earth. My law is this: Find out a leader's weak point, and I can unsettle a city."

The many reports about Wang seem to overlook the most obvious questions: Why did it take so long to catch him? And have the government officials who apparently played a role in his scam been punished?

This article is from Danwei.org