Chinese corruption busters set sights on Sydney's Killara, despite the denials
China is seeking Australia's help to track down corrupt officials and funds they have hidden in its escalating corruption crackdown.
Its corruption-busters running Operation Fox Hunt have suggested Australia had been a popular safe haven for the funds of the fraudsters.
At the very tip of the epidemic, the Australian Financial Review Weekend has pin-pointed a Sydney couple, Su Guanlin and Qian Yi, the son and daughter in law of a powerful Chinese railway official, Su Shunhu, who was sentenced for corruption by a Beijing court last Friday.
The AFR special investigation of the money transfers between China and Australia cited court documents from the trial, along with property and company searches in Australia, providing the alleged signs of Australia’s status as a favoured destination for the funds of corrupt Chinese officials.
Court documents obtained by the AFR correspondents Angus Grigg and Lisa Murray in China revealed that $1.19 million was transferred to the local couple's Australian bank accounts between 2008 and early 2010.
The money was wired to Australia from mainland China and Hong Kong in 16 instalments.
The AFR reported the Sydney couple have since bought an extensive property portfolio.
The elder Su's trial concluded when the Secondnd Beijing Intermediate People’s Court sentenced the former deputy director of the transport department within the Ministry of Railways to life in prison after finding him guilty of receiving 25 million yuan ($4.7 million) in bribes.
He was providing preferential access to the rail freight network where demand vastly outstripped supply, leaving loads of coal stranded.
His Sydney-based son and daughter in law paid $1.35 million for a 1950s house in Killara in April last year. The 38 Cook Road, Killara house (pictured above) has remained empty, set for demolition and a $500,000 rebuild.
Property records show the couple also owned a townhouse in Breakfast Point bought for $2.2 million off the plan in 2008 and sold for $2.46 million in April last year.
They are also linked to a $550,000 apartment in Rhodes, which is the registered address for their company, and another $400,000 apartment in the Proximity complex at Wolli Creek, bought off the plan in 2006 for $400,000.
The couple told the AFR Weekend, they were confident the couple’s assets could not be targeted under proceeds of crime laws.
“I don’t think so, because everything we own is in our name,” she said. “Because everything we own here isn’t associated with him, and it’s ours, it has nothing to do with him. He has no association with our home.”
Qian said she worked as an accountant and her husband was employed by wholesale trading company.
The list that Chinese officials are seeking assistance on is topped by Gao Yan, a former provincial governor of Jilin, party secretary of Yunan and former chief executive of State Grid Corp, who is thought to be in Australia.
Caijing, a Chinese business magazine, recently identified Gao has having fled to Australia in 2002 after allegations that he and his son, Gao Xinyuan, reaped millions from a rigged electricity transmission building program.
Caijing’s report also identified Lan Pu, a former deputy mayor of Xiamen, and Tong Yanbai, a former head of the highway bureau in Hunan province, as having fled to Australia in 1999 and 2004 respectively. Their whereabouts are not known.
Liu Tienan, a former vice-minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, was arrested last year with a fake Australian passport and $2 million.
The Washington-based Global Financial Integrity group has estimated that US$2.8 trillion flowed out of China illegally between 2005 and 2011.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China’s top corruption fighting body, estimates as much as US$1.5 trillion may have been funnelled just this year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption began in late 2012, with some 180,000 party cadres having been sanctioned, some by execution.
