Zhou Xicheng, warlord and chairman of the province of Guizhou
In 2004, New World Publishing House, one of China's most important foreign publishing institutions, one of the members of China International Publishing Group, and a central first-level publishing house, published a book entitled "Documentary of Citibank's Plunder in China", edited by Mr. Yan Pinzhong, a 75-year-old professor at Peking University, a member of the Communist Party of China, a translator, and one of the editors-in-chief of the 100-volume "Full History of China" and "Full History of the World".
Now, the introduction to the book on Douban Reading is "This book revolves around the author's six trips to the United States to collect Chinese deposits from Citibank, and Citibank's blatant non-payment of accounts, through a large number of historical facts and notes, exposing the disgraceful history of Citibank from entering China in 1902 to withdrawing in 1949, taking advantage of China's civil strife and wantonly plundering Chinese money." In fact, it is a matter of course to deposit money and withdraw money, which shows the double human rights standards practiced by the United States. ”
Judging from this "introduction", "Documentary of Citibank's Plunder in China" is really not an ordinary publication. In fact, since its publication, the story has sparked a series of debates, lawsuits, and even jail time for the editors.
Let me first talk about the Guizhou warlord Zhou Xicheng.
Zhou Xicheng, a son of a peasant in Tongzi County, Guizhou, was born in 1893, was appointed chairman of Guizhou Province by Chiang Kai-shek in 1926, and was killed by stray bullets in Zhenning in 1929 at the age of 36. Although Zhou Xicheng has only been the chairman of Guizhou Province for 3 years, his reputation is still very good, and the people of Guizhou have erected a bronze statue for him. His achievements include:
The first is to build highways. When Zhou Xicheng took office, there was no road in Guizhou, and Zhou set up a highway bureau, formulated the "Outline of the Province's Highway Plan", and for the first time put forward the idea of "county-to-county highways". The Guichi Line was successively built: from Guiyang via Wujiang, Zunyi, Tongzi, Wenshui, Tucheng and reached Chishui and Hejiang by ferry, with a total length of more than 400 kilometers; Guixi Road: from Guiyang through Qingzhen, Pingba, Anshun, Zhenning, Guanling, Annan (now Qinglong), Pu'an, Panxian and reached Pingyi in Yunnan, with a total length of about 400 kilometers; Guinan Road: from Guiyang through Longli, Guiding, Duyun, Dushan and Mawei into Guangxi Nandan, with a total length of 334.67 kilometers. The government funded the establishment of the "Guizhou Pilot Transportation Company" as a demonstration, and purchased 10 American cars into operation. Since then, private capital has established more than 40 private transport companies (car dealers). With the relocation of the Nationalist government to Chongqing, commercial transportation in Guizhou once flourished.
The second is to set up an industry. It has successively opened an arsenal, a weaving factory, a paper mill, a white medicine factory, a kerosene factory, and mining minerals.
The third is to attach importance to education. It is planned to merge several major middle schools and colleges in Guiyang into a modern university, and prepare to set up six departments of agriculture and forestry, chemistry, economics, civil engineering, mining and metallurgy, and mechanical and electrical engineering, which is the first time that the name of "Guizhou University" has been proposed. But because of Zhou Zhan's death, the plan died prematurely. �
Fourth, strictly administer officials. It is stipulated that wherever bandits rob the property of the masses, the local county magistrate must compensate the masses for their losses; the punishment of corrupt officials and corrupt officials is particularly severe, and officials must swear at the City God Temple when they take office, and as soon as corruption occurs, they will immediately swear according to their oaths.
In the book "Documentary of Citibank's Plunder in China", another incident is recorded by Zhou Xicheng, in the late 1920s, Zhou Xicheng deposited his gold, cash, physical and other $300 million worth of property in the name of 18 people into the Citibank branch in Singapore, and Jin Di, as his confidential secretary, was one of the 18 people. After the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, the Japanese invaders had successively invaded and occupied the Philippines, Hong Kong and other places, directly approaching Singapore, and the Citibank Singapore Jincheng Road Branch of the United States was about to withdraw to the United States. Zhou Xicheng proposed $50 million and then handed over the remaining $250 million of his deposits to Jin Di and transferred them to citibank's New York headquarters. The handover procedures were handled at Citibank, which issued deposits, withdrawals and related vouchers to Jindi. At that time, due to the increased risk of war, in response to the depositors' requirements to ensure that their assets were foolproof, Citibank also specially created a set of exquisite and incomparable deposit certificates, with the words "special issuance", "non-destruction", "no time limit", "pay with the ticket" and so on.
Yan Pinzhong
According to the book, due to the frequent wars in China at that time, Jin Di, as the sole owner of this huge amount of money, went into hiding and eventually lived in a small mountain village in southern China. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the U.S. government froze all the assets of the People's Republic of China in the United States, and the hundreds of millions of yuan of deposits of the elderly Jin Di were also frozen in the United States. In 1979, china and the United States reached an agreement to unfreeze China's assets in the United States, and Jin Di had the conditions to get her deposits back, but because she had been anonymous and isolated in the deep mountain temple for many years, she did not know that the deposit could be retrieved until 1990. Deposits of $250 million, plus interest, had exceeded $1.2 billion by this time.
Due to her advanced age and inability to move, Jin Di could only entrust her nephew Xiong Anjun to arrange a withdrawal operation. Between 1996 and 1997, Xiong Anjun and his relatives went around asking for someone to undertake the matter, and then the intermediary found Wu Lan, the manager of a company in Shenzhen. Wu Lan knew a Canadian, and the Canadian knew a Taiwanese, and the Taiwanese introduced a Singapore lawyer. Led by a Singapore lawyer, a group of more than a dozen of them rushed to Singapore to verify and withdraw money. Through the lawyer's efforts, they met with the head of Citibank's Singapore branch. The person in charge asked Xiong Anjun to hand over all the documents to them and listen to the news after nine months, but refused to issue any written materials.
Xiong Anjun felt that there was a problem in this, so he took the documents back to China and continued to ask people to go to the United States to handle it, and every withdrawal was fruitless.
On November 5, 1997, Shao Lianhua, who was the pursuer with Xiong Anjun, negotiated with the vice president of citibank in New York with American lawyers, but to no avail.
Unable to continue negotiations, Shao Lianhua began filing a civil lawsuit in the United States in 1998 over the matter. On May 8, 1998, Shao Lianhua entrusted the united States AUER BACH (KIRSCH lawyer to file a lawsuit in the United States federal court. After the court was accepted, it was scheduled to hold the hearing on October 6 of that year, but AUER BACH (KIRSCH lawyer suddenly issued a fax statement on September 17 that he would no longer act as counsel for the plaintiff, thus preventing the opening of the federal court.
Shao Lianhua
In the end, Shao Lianhua found Harvey, a well-known American lawyer, who negotiated with the US Federal Court and agreed to hold another trial on November 30, 1998. Harvey lawyers notified the plaintiff to send witnesses and bring evidence to the United States, and under the premise of the notice of the opening of the trial in the US federal court, he issued an invitation letter to the Chinese citizens involved in the case to testify in accordance with the law. The U.S. Consulate General in Shenyang refused the visa on the grounds that there were immigration tendencies, making the second court session a failure.
Shao Lianhua showed the media the deposit and withdrawal documents, a total of one and three pairs, using about 8 kilograms of gold. In addition to the gold plate, there are more than 100 pieces of daguerreotype, silk screen plate, five-color overprinted paper plate, etc. The woman's avatar on the gold version of the document is the custodian of this 33-year-old Jin Di. The royalties for the manufacture of these documents are greater than the value of gold.
"This hundreds of millions of yuan deposit of the elderly Jin Di is only one of many deposits that have been lost in China." Shao Lianhua said that it is precisely because its evidence is complete that it has become a typical case of recovery, "We have used all the means we can use in the United States, but Citi seems to be iron-hearted and does not give, they know that the first payment is given, and immediately there will be a second-amount pursuer." ”
After Shao Lianhua and others actually failed in civil litigation in the United States, their litigation power existed in name only in the United States. In the meantime, Brown, Harvey and many other well-known American lawyers also believed that the deposit and withdrawal vouchers were real after field investigation in China.
Just when the mountains were running out, Harvey's lawyer said, "Why don't you fight this lawsuit in China?" According to Citibank's bylaws, as long as there is a deposit with Citibank in the United States, it is valid to withdraw from any of its branches. This sentence reminded Shao Lianhua that he returned to the motherland to fight for his rights in his own land.
On December 24, 2000, Ying Songnian, member of the Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress and professor of administrative law at China University of Political Science and Law, Jiang Ping, professor of civil law, shi Tiantao, professor of civil law of Tsinghua University, and several other well-known legal experts and financial experts in China held an argumentative meeting in Beijing.
Experts discuss the Jindi deposit case
Experts agree that there is no possibility of fraud in this document at present, it is a fact, and the document is issued by Citibank, specially manufactured, unique and not comparable. Therefore, its right to evaluate authenticity and falsity can only be determined through judicial procedures, and any act of making false assertions is illegal and irresponsible, and it is a deprivation of the procedural power of our citizens.
Experts believe that according to the provisions on the voucher that "all branches in the world are valid", the Chinese courts have jurisdiction to legally prosecute the deposit. In this regard, lawyer Tian Wenchang, a well-known legal expert and director of the Criminal Committee of the All-China Lawyers Association, believes that the facts of this case exist, "judging from the current materials, it fully meets the requirements for filing a case in the Chinese court." Since these deposit and withdrawal documents are specially issued by Citibank and are not comparable, information to identify their authenticity should be provided by Citibank. ”
Regarding the authenticity of this deposit, Wang Chuan, a lawyer representing the case, believes: "For these deposit and withdrawal vouchers, there is currently no evidence to prove that they are forged. The case should meet the court's requirements for filing a case. ”
But Citibank insisted the deposit certificates were fake. Fang Arkzi also wrote a column online calling the pursuit of Citibank's accounts a scam.
Ark
The authenticity of the "Jin Di deposit case" has not yet been clarified, but the resulting reputation rights lawsuits have continued. For example, the editors of the book believe that Yahoo's "Citibank 10 Billion Deposit Scam" article infringed its right to reputation, but the court held that the dispute between the two parties was a dispute between different views, so it ruled to dismiss the plaintiff's lawsuit.
Youth Reference has interviewed the parties concerned. Shao Lianhua revealed to reporters that more than 3 million yuan has been spent on "Jindi Deposits" over the years, and they will use iron facts to further expose Citibank's delinquency and must recover the money that belongs to Chinese.
"The so-called 'Jindi Deposit' is definitely a scam." Internet celebrity Ark zi firmly told Youth Reference.
Zhou Xicheng's descendants also came out and said that there was no deposit.
With the passage of time, the "Jindi Deposit" case has gradually faded out of people's vision and become an unsolved case.