In 1999, the "Yuanhua extraordinarily large smuggling case" with Lai Changxing as the main suspect shocked the entire country and became the "first major case" after the founding of the mainland. The total value of this case was as high as 53 billion yuan, and 30 billion yuan was evaded in taxes, which had an extremely bad impact on mainland society.
However, the mastermind secretly fled abroad during the search and was absconded in Canada for 12 years.
During this period, the mainland government and the Canadian government began to negotiate for a long time, and it was not until the mainland made many concessions that Canada agreed to repatriate and let this evil man return to his homeland and receive the punishment he deserved.
So what evil deeds did this notorious smuggling syndicate do, and what efforts and concessions did the mainland make in the process of extraditing him?
Lai Changxing's "smuggling empire"
Lai Changxing's background is very hard, and the poverty of his family since he was a child even made him not receive a complete education, and he is completely "illiterate". Although Lai Changxing has no culture, he only understands one thing, that is, to make money, and if he makes money, he will have a good life.
After working as a worker in a screw factory in his hometown for several years, he discovered that the garment making industry was lucrative, and that machines such as looms were used to make clothes. Knowing that the garment factory has a great demand for textile machine accessories in the market, he began to think about using his savings in the past few years to start a business.
At the beginning, he cooperated with others to build a machine parts factory, and took advantage of this wave of dividends to make a lot of money. But he found that the machine parts industry was very profitable, so he got involved in the rare auto parts industry at that time, and earned nearly 10 million family properties in a few years.
Because he often heard others say that Hong Kong is a treasure of feng shui for entrepreneurship, so during his business trip, he went to Hong Kong several times and found that the market here is very large, and he wanted to take root in Hong Kong to start a business.
In 1991, Lai Changxing moved his family to Hong Kong, where he obtained Hong Kong residency with his generous family assets and connections accumulated over the years.
Originally, he wanted to engage in the hot garment trade industry at that time, but at this time, it coincided with the economic downturn in Hong Kong and the real estate crash.
He is very keenly aware of the business opportunities, and uses his own funds to buy real estate, with the recovery of Hong Kong's economy, he has earned hundreds of millions of family properties.
With so much money in his hand, he returned to his original plan and established Hong Kong Meihao Company and Hong Kong Yuanhua Company to engage in the clothing trade industry.
But after experiencing the feeling of getting rich in an instant through real estate speculation, Lai Changxing is no longer satisfied with ordinary business, after all, the money made by such a business model is a trickle and long-term flow, which cannot satisfy his inflated ambitions.
With the rapid development of China's economy, a large number of overseas Chinese choose to return to China to invest and start businesses. Seeing this, Lai Changxing also decided to return to the mainland to invest in the construction of factories and explore business opportunities.
When he was chatting with old friends and old customers from when he started his business, he found that his status as a Hong Kong businessman was very useful and he could make a fortune.
So he built a company called Yuanhua Electronics Company in Xiamen, which was very unusual, although it did not produce any electronic products, but the factory actually rented a bonded warehouse, which was always full.
In fact, this electronics company is just a leather bag company, and in fact, it is just a "skin" as a cover for their smuggling of chips. As chip smuggling became more and more successful, he became more and more emboldened and began to venture into other fields.
At this time, some people are curious: Can an ordinary electronics company still be able to obtain import and export licenses? In fact, Lai Changxing has long anticipated the risk of smuggling, and he has dragged the leaders of many large state-owned enterprises into the water and carried out smuggling trade by "backdoor" by borrowing the import and export rights of state-owned enterprises.
You must know that after he cooperated with those large state-owned enterprises, he not only smuggled chips, but also began to dabble in those bulk goods. For example, vegetable oil, oil, automobiles, cigarettes, etc., in order to launder the money earned from smuggling, he even opened several underground banks.
How did the clumsy method of "backdoor borrowing" get past the Xiamen Customs? This is to mention Lai Changxing's shameless methods, in which he secretly cleared all the links of the customs, and the entire Xiamen Customs became his "helper" in smuggling.
Ordinary money still does not reassure Lai Changxing, he has built a business model of a smuggling group company in his heart, pulled all his family members in, and also pulled several key personnel in the customs into this business structure.
In terms of avoiding supervision, those customs professionals gave him a lot of advice, and cleverly avoided regulatory risks through loopholes in the written word. At the same time, Lai Changxing is also very cautious, he changes smuggling materials frequently and irregularly, and uses a lot of false information as a "stealth cloak" to avoid exposing himself.
In order to expand the "protective umbrella" to a greater extent, he specially built a multi-storey office building, which was called the "Red Building" by many insiders because the walls were painted red. Is it called the "Red Mansion" just because the color of the walls is red?
In fact, this is not the case, but because this office building is actually a high-end "clubhouse", which not only has all kinds of entertainment equipment, but also accompanies the wine girl to play throughout the whole process, so that many officials have fallen into the "Pansi Hole".
Many officials have done things here, and they have all been recorded with cameras, and this video has become the capital of Lai Changxing's game, so that many officials have to become his accomplices and escort him.
Finally, in 1999, someone reported the Lai Changxing smuggling syndicate through a 74-page report letter, because the amount of money involved was too large, and it sounded "astronomical" to the people at that time.
In August of the same year, Lai Changxing saw that the situation was not good, so he absconded with his family overnight and ran to Canada to avoid the punishment of mainland law.
Extradition with many obstacles
Why did the absconding country choose Canada instead of the United States next door? Are there any twists and turns that we don't know?
It turned out that Lai Changxing was really cunning and cunning, and when he was preparing for his retreat, he had specially studied the policies and attitudes of countries around the world towards absconders.
Then he found out that Canada is a good country, not only does it not have the death penalty, but it is also very lenient with prisoners who absconded with their family assets.
Therefore, he transferred his assets to Canada as early as a few years ago, and would return to live in Hong Kong from time to time, confusing the people who were secretly investigating with the travel rules that were not easy to figure out, and striving for more opportunities for himself to escape.
But when he heard the news of the arrest, he fled with his family to Canada. But I didn't expect that although he had assets of several hundred million, he did not have Canadian immigration status.
Just after his tourist visa expired, he was placed under house arrest by the Canadian government. Mainland officials have communicated with the Canadian government many times about the repatriation of this person, but they did not expect that he would take advantage of the loopholes to stir up the situation.
The most famous part of Canada is actually their law firm, their lawyers are in the gray area all year round, as long as you are rich enough, these lawyers can help you find all kinds of legal loopholes, so that those people can still live in Canada.
Lai Changxing himself is a person who knows "money ability" very well, so he spent a lot of money to hire a lawyer to apply for refugee status for him, so that he can continue to appeal for refugee status as long as he pays the lawyer's fees.
In this way, Lai Changxing can be delayed enough time, after all, as long as there is an appeal, Canada will not repatriate Lai Changxing.
The lawsuit didn't end until 2009, but the results were not good news for us.
Because the local lawyer helped Lai Changxing win the lawsuit, he not only lifted Lai Changxing's house arrest, but also applied for a work visa for Lai Changxing. This means that Lai Changxing has fully regained his free body in Canada.
This is a problem, because there is no bilateral extradition treaty between the mainland and Canada, and there is not even an international convention or corresponding agreement that can be used, so the standard international extradition system cannot be used.
Moreover, China, as a country that has not abolished the death penalty, is likely to impose the death penalty on a serious criminal like Lai Changxing. This is contrary to the principle of "non-extradition for the death penalty" in international law, and the Canadian government has seized this law and rejected the mainland's extradition request.
Concessions made by the mainland
In view of the hard-line attitude of the Canadian government, there has been no good solution on the mainland, and the two sides have been at a stalemate on this issue for more than 10 years, which has also allowed Lai Changxing to be "dashing" in Canada for more than 10 years.
They not only underestimated our determination to thoroughly investigate this matter, but also underestimated our "zero tolerance" for breaking the law and committing crimes. In the face of such a heinous criminal circumstance, if you can escape the trial on the mainland just because you have absconded from the country, this will have an extremely bad social impact.
The most important thing is that Lai Changxing's case involves a wide range of people and people, and if he is not brought back to China, then this case will not be closed at all.
Therefore, for the sake of Lai Changxing's case, our side has made a lot of efforts in the past 10 years or so, and even sent a diplomatic note to the Canadian government through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, promising that Lai Changxing would not be sentenced to death or a suspended death sentence.
Seeing that the Canadian government is still passively delaying, the mainland government issued an amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment VIII, which abolishes the death penalty for 13 economic and non-violent crimes, including the crime of smuggling ordinary goods, which is one of the charges facing Lai.
The promulgation of this amendment will not only promote the success rate of Lai Changxing's extradition, but also demonstrate the mainland's efforts in restricting the scope of application of the death penalty in the international community. At the same time, we also said that we will not recover Lai's property in Canada, and all this will remain in Canada.
After the mainland gave in to these efforts, the Canadian government finally relented and agreed to China's request. In July 2011, the Canadian police formally arrested Lai Changxing and issued a repatriation verdict.
After Lai Changxing returned to China, after more than a month of trial, Lai Changxing finally ushered in the trial he deserved - he was sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political life rights, and confiscated personal property.
In this way, a major smuggling case with a design of tens of billions of dollars was finally brought to an end after more than ten years. Those who infringe on the interests of the country have finally been punished as they deserve.
epilogue
Although Lai Changxing, who committed such a serious and heinous crime, was not sentenced to death as the public wished, it is also an appropriate result to let him repent of his evil deeds in the rest of his life behind bars. Among them, we have seen the state's "zero tolerance" attitude towards criminal behavior, and the fact that Lai Changxing was repatriated to face trial is a wake-up call to those who violate the law and commit crimes!