Shuli Ren, Columnist

Why China Is Sentencing a Tycoon to Death

The harsh penalty against Lai Xiaomin is likely a warning to others in the sprawling state-run financial sector to stick to their duties.

January 5, 2021 at 10:57 PM UTC

By Shuli Ren

Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. A former investment banker, she was a markets reporter for Barron’s. She is a CFA charterholder.

Serve the people… or else — Serve the people… or else
Photographer: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images AsiaPac

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

The bigamy conviction got a lot of the attention but Lai Xiaomin received a death sentence on Tuesday over a much more serious issue troubling China.

Lai oversaw China Huarong Asset Management Co. from 2012 until he ran into trouble in 2018. He was found guilty of receiving 1.79 billion yuan ($277.3 million) in bribes, with bigamy thrown in for good measure. Still, capital punishment for this kind of white-collar crime is unusual, legal experts say. Wu Xiaohui, former chairman of Anbang Insurance Group Co., whose clean-up is costing Beijing billions of dollars, was sentenced to 18 years in jail over a $10 billion fraud in 2018.