EXCLUSIVE: Billionaire Chinese oligarch Xiao Jianhua dealt with CCP elite‘s fortunes before he vanished from Hong Kong. We have traced an estimated $1.5 BILLION in TORONTO real estate developments to Xiao’s family empire National | Globalnews.ca globalnews.ca/news/8637896/x…
1. I've been chasing XIAO's story for five years with Access to Information requests. Where is he? How did he get Canadian citizenship while dealing with the fortunes of CCP princeling clans including XI Jinping? @PekingMike NYT's and @DavidBarboza2 did incredible groundbreaking
2. work with corporate documents and sources to reveal how Xiao made his fortune, they established ties to Xi's family wealth, and how Xiao Jianhua rose from student leader to boss in China's financial system after supporting the PLA elites' atrocities in Tiananmen.
3. This is a two-part series, in which we trace the long overdue Canadian investigation into the empire of Xiao and his wife, Mongolian former Model Zhou Hongwen, from Beijing and Inner Mongolia, into Toronto and Vancouver, from about 2008, when Xiao's privatization of SOEs ...
4. started to attract heat in China, and set off a cascade of competing interests, that appear to go right to the pinnacle of China's oligarch system, and factional battles between PRC's boss factions: Xi Jinping and Jiang Zemin. But what about the Canadian real estate, you say?
5. This issue gathers powerful resonance currently in Canada, as leaders including deputy PM Chrystia Freeland speak of "following the money" for national security reasons and chasing Russian oligarchs. @FINTRAC_Canada @cafreeland @csiscanada
6. For our main story today, Part 1, we reveal discoveries of a veritable Russian nesting doll set of corporations -- vehicles for Toronto real estate develoment -- directed by Tomorrow Group's (Xiao's PRC corporate network) co-director Zhou Hongwen and her sister, Zhou Liwen,
7. and Zhou Liwen's husband Fan Yanfeng, and this man, Lei Guo. Many of the companies were registered and run from two floors of a Markham, Ontario office building. 
8. From Beijing, financing for major Chinese SOEs, to Markham, Ontario, Toronto real estate towers.
9. For this story we did an incredible amount of digging with @andrewglobal into land titles and court records to piece together Xiao's family real estate moves and assets in TO, from the palatial Markham mansion with Playboy grotto pool and luxury hotel style entrance hall, to,
@andrewglobal 10. the luxury condo towers and townhouse developments across southern Ontario, where Xiao family companies have been aggressive land assemblers since 2015. You need to go into the piece and see the images and company charts to get the picture, and understand how this CCP-linked
@andrewglobal 11. investment empire, capital tied to a Chinese company that PRC regulators accuse of financial crimes, corruption and stolen funds, raises questions about money laundering and lax regulation in Toronto real estate, and impacts upon Canada's housing market. @StephenPunwasi
12. And there certainly are ties to #vanre and efforts by these investors to enter B.C.'s economy @CullenInquiryBC
13. Some images of the decadence of Xiao's family's pad in Markham
14. A two-lot estate, with pool and tennis courts and swimming grotto and putting green among Muskoka-landscaped grounds built on one side, and the stone Chateau on the other.
15. Indoor courts
16. 8-car garage
17. A Canadian estate, transferred for $2 to a family member of Xiao Jianhua, with $14-million in mortgages taken out against it.
18. Tune in tomorrow for Part 2. Where is Xiao? His story highlights the risks of tremendous wealth via 'guanxi' or the 'white gloves' system in XI Jinping's era. Here is what one political-scientist cited in Government of Canada documents I obtained through ATIP, wrote.
19. “Should Xiao possess direct knowledge of shady business deals involving Xi’s political foes, his arrest would send a chilling message,” said a February 2017 report by Minxin Pei, a Chinese-American political-science professor, distributed among Canadian consular officials.
20.
“It is easy to envision Xiao singing like a canary in one of the detention centres run by the party’s anti-corruption investigators.”
“It is easy to envision Xiao singing like a canary in one of the detention centres run by the party’s anti-corruption investigators.”
STORY 2: What does Xiao Jianhua's vanishing mean for the Government of Canada, and 300k Canadians living in Hong Kong
https://twitter.com/scoopercooper/status/1498656753147392008?s=20&t=46Su7kASP20NvD0T6EDxdg
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