Dozens of ordinary Chinese investors who lost their money after the collapse of a state-supported financial services group in the province of Shandong in eastern China were held by the authorities to draw attention to the issue through foreign media and to “be used by anti-china forces abroad,” said two sources at Radio Free Asia.
Last month, several investors among the nearly 100,000 affected by a financial scam of 20 billion yuan (or 2.74 billion US dollars) linked to the province of Shandong, a Jianghaihui group, spoke with the international media, including the FRG, in the hope of creating global awareness of the scandal and the rapid corrective action.
Wednesday, sources told RFA that the Chinese authorities had owned many of these investors, accusing them of being “used by anti-china forces abroad”, after having given interviews to journalists and shared press articles on the scandal in social or private media groups.
One of the sources said that more than a dozen depositors in several cities in the Shandong province, including Weifang and Zaozhuang, have been placed in administrative detention by local police in recent days.
“All the people who had contacted you (RFA) from here have been detained,” said the first source named Wang, who is one of the women affected investors.
“They (the police) said that we (victims) were used by international anti-china forces and that we all traded crimes,” she added.
Wang, like the other sources interviewed by RFA, only provided their surname for security reasons.
At the end of March, RFA reported that the president of Jianghaihui had fled China for the United States, as well as his wife, after the company suddenly closed, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of distraught investors who had deposited their savings in financial regimes managed by the firm.
Sources have told RFA that investors had been convened several times by officials of the local public security organ for interrogation and subject to constant detention and surveillance to share information with international journalists.
“The police used the news published on major websites (abroad) and owned more than a dozen people. There were also people from other provinces and cities and others who shared (reports) with each other. The people of the Public Security Office showed me (reports) and said it was anti-china forces,” said Wang.
The majority of people detained are women, some of whom were released two weeks ago, while several others continued to stand, said the second source.
“The detainees said they did not know that the people who interviewed them were journalists … The police asked us not to contact anti-china forces abroad,” said Zhang, another investor, in RFA.
Investors said they believed that the fundraising regimes led by Jianghaihui were authentic because they were launched within the framework of government measures to consolidate the balance sheets of private companies.
They accused the local government of not having fulfilled its supervision functions. Thanks to the letters of appeal, the protests and the awareness of the media, the victims asked for justice for themselves in the Jianghaahui affair which, according to them, constitute “contractual fraud”.
Illegal fundraising or contractual fraud?
In a letter to the Central Commission of the Chinese Communist Party for the inspection of the discipline and at the Ministry of Public Security, investors have called for an in -depth investigation, as well as to recover their lost funds and to protect their rights.
They also asked why the local police classified the case as an “illegal fundraising”.
Rather, it should be described as “contractual fraud”, noted investors, because Jianghaihui had held six major financial licenses, issued by the government, paid taxes and authorized annual audits each time.
Since 2023, there has been a series of similar cases that many financial companies, under the pretext of the financing of small businesses, have collected large sums of money that they have transferred abroad, leaving helpless investors, said a third source.
“Many financing companies in various places … used this model to collect funds planned, then transferred the funds (abroad), then chose for a time to flee (China),” said a resident of Lilyi, Shandong.
“Some companies have transferred assets, then used a scapegoat agent to resume the blame. People cannot recover their money,” she added.
According to a social media report led by citizen journalists, “Mr. Li is not your teacher, “the Beijing police on April 22 have strongly suppressed demonstrations by hundreds of Chinese investors victims of the recent zhongrong international trust.
Before declaring bankruptcy in 2024, Zhongrong was one of the largest banks of shadows and manifolds in China worth $ 108 billion in 2022.
Published by Tenzin Pema and Mat Pennington.