Investment company fined US$220m for duping investors
Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court yesterday fined Shanghai Kuailu Investment Goup 1.5 billion yuan (US$221.8 million) for fraudulently raising funds.
Two other companies involved in the case — which the court saidcost investors 15.2 billion yuan — were fined 200 million yuan each and 15 executives were jailed, two of them for life.
The two other companies were East Hongqiao Small-Sum Credit Co, a joint venture mainly sponsored by Kuailu, and East Hongqiao Bonding Co, also closely linked to Kuailu.
Huang Jialiu, chairman of East Hongqiao Bonding, and Wei Yanping, former chairman of Kuailu Investment, were jailed for life.
Xu Qi, former chairman of Kuailu Investment, was fined and sentenced to 13 years in prison and fined, and another 12 defendants were fined and jailed for up to 15 years.
Between March 2014 and April 2016, East Hongqiao Small-Sum Credit Co fabricated large amounts of evidence of indebtedness, and East Hongqiao Bonding Co posted guarantees at Kuailu’s request, prosecutors said.
Kuailu and its affiliates, without any regulatory permit or registration, lured investors with high returns and illegally collected more than 43.4 billion yuan from the public — only about 28.2 billion yuan of which was used to pay back the principal and interest to earlier investors.
The authorities are continuing their investigations and hunting other executives who are still at large.