Portrait of a femme fatale who brought down China's elite

 A respected magazine has provided the most detailed picture yet of the complex life of a billionaire businesswoman responsible for the downfall of some China's most powerful figures in a sex-and-corruption saga that has gripped the nation.

Li Wei slept with up to 15 top business and party figures before turning on some of them in a series of corruption cases to save herself from a long prison sentence, according to Caijing business magazine. Her contacts book contained some of the most powerful men in the land, as she used her beauty to break into the secretive bastion of powerful men that tightly control China, according to the magazine.

Ms Li was jailed on tax fraud charges in 2006 but was released early this year and now lives in Hong Kong. The magazine alleges that she was released early because her diary contains fresh allegations of "immoral relationships" with "high-ranking officials", which is code for officials at the most senior levels in the land.

Ms Li reportedly created a vast network of protection and favour in the provinces in Yunnan, Guangdong, Beijing and Qingdao to build a multibillion-pound business empire in return for sexual favours. As her corrupt protectors went to jail, she turned herself in and was given a lenient jail term.

"You cannot invest all your resources and opportunities into one person, you have to construct a huge relationship net, like an umbrella," Ms Li was quoted as saying by Chinese media. Her empire at its peak consisted of more than 20 companies in Beijing, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and overseas, in industries including tobacco, real estate and advertising. She owned 183 petrol stations in Beijing.

A great friend of Wang Yi, vice-chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, her shares and bonds did very well. Her assets were at one point worth about £1bn.

Born in Vietnam in 1963 of mixed French-Vietnamese parentage, she moved at the age of seven with her father to Yunnan province in search of a better life. She sold tobacco as a youngster, but her ability to manipulate the arcane system of building connections, combined with her considerable allure, transformed her into a formidable power broker.

Zheng Shaodong, the former chief investigations officer at the Ministry of Public Security in Guangdong province, got her a residence permit. After earning legitimate resident status, she married a top official at the local tobacco bureau.

Through her husband, Ms Li managed to gain access to former Yunnan governor Li Jiating, who became her lover. She helped him get resident status for his son in Hong Kong in exchange for tobacco export quotas. The governor narrowly escaped the death sentence in 2003 for taking more than £19m in bribes.

Ms Li became involved with Du Shicheng, the former party secretary of the rich city of Qingdao in Shandong province. Through her relationship with Mr Du, she secured top-notch real estate in Qingdao, a coastal city that was once a German protectorate, and soon became one of the city's biggest property developers.

Mr Du introduced her to his good friend, Chen Tonghai, the chairman of Sinopec, China's oil and gas giant. He too became Ms Li's lover, and he gave her gifts of millions of shares in companies owned by Sinopec.

Mr Du's revelations about his friend's corrupt activities precipitated Mr Chen's downfall. He was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve. Ms Li's testimony was central to the conviction of many of the officials she entertained in her boudoir.

Some of her former lovers are serving time in Beijing's Qincheng high-security prison, which primarily houses political prisoners but has been used for corrupt cadres.

Aware that corruption could undermine the rule of the Communist Party, the leadership has organised several high-profile campaigns in the last few years to try to stamp out graft.

According to a survey by state prosecutors, more than 90 per cent of the country's senior officials punished on serious graft charges in the past five years have kept mistresses.

The victims

*Chen Tonghai

Ex-chairman of China's second-largest oil company, Sinopec, given a suspended death penalty in 2009 for taking 196m yuan (£17.5m) in bribes.

*Li Jiating

Ex-governor of Yunnan province, sentenced to death for corruption in 2003. Thought to be in Qincheng Prison, Beijing.

*Liu Zhihua

The ex-vice-mayor of Beijing, who supervised preparations for the 2008 Olympics, was sentenced to death in 2008 for taking $1.45m in bribes. His sentence may be commuted to life imprisonment.

*Zheng Shaodong

Ex-head of China's Economic Criminal Investigation Bureau received a suspended death sentence for corruption.

*Huang Songyou

The ex-deputy head of the Supreme Court is currently serving a life sentence for embezzlement and receiving bribes worth £500,000.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/asia/portrait-of-a-femme-fatale-who-brought-down-chinas-elite-2219296.html

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WASHINGTON — She calls herself “Chinaloa.” Born in Guangdong Province in 1986, her parents labored in a factory 400 kilometers from home, unable to share in the miracle of China’s economic rise. Seeking a better future, they secured labor visas and migrated to Mexico in late 2000, taking jobs in a relative’s restaurant. Remarkably, by the next decade, their daughter, Qiyun “Chinaloa” Chen, had risen to the ranks of elite money brokers, facilitating cocaine and fentanyl operations across the Western Hemisphere.

For enemies and allies alike—Chinaloa—the moniker she used in encrypted WeChat texts—fuses two worlds: Chinese money laundering and the narco-terror of Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartels. Few outside elite law enforcement circles, however, understand that U.S. intelligence views Chinese gangsters with suspected Communist Party affiliations as intrinsically connected to the brutal Mexican cartels in counter-narcotics investigations, ultimately posing greater threats to American borders and sovereignty.

Yet the story of “Chinaloa” Chen, a Chinese migrant who brought together 14K Triad money launderers and a feared matriarch of Sinaloa nicknamed the “Iron Lady,” sits squarely at the center of what President Donald Trump now calls an unprecedented crackdown on drug trafficking and illegal migration. Within hours of returning to the Oval Office, Trump signed a series of executive orders that promise to designate certain cartels and criminal groups as terrorists, invoke the Alien Enemies Act to remove them, and mobilize the U.S. military for reinforced border security. His new hard line aims to eradicate cartel influence in fentanyl, human trafficking, illegal immigration, and border threats, imposing punitive measures on nations Trump accuses of complicity—China, Mexico, Canada, Panama, and beyond.

With timing that was conspicuous, on Jan. 21, the day after Trump confirmed plans to hit Canada with a 25 percent tariff for failing to stem fentanyl flows into the U.S., Toronto police disclosed new details on the largest-ever cocaine bust in the city’s history. Authorities announced the seizure of 835 kilograms of cocaine worth $83 million, tied to the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación. The cartel, an outlier for extreme violence even among rival Mexican narcos, has reportedly produced millions of doses of deadly fentanyl and smuggled them into the United States, often disguised to look like Xanax, Percocet, or oxycodone. Still, most Canadians remain largely unaware of the Chinese financial underpinnings of a growing infiltration of Mexican crime led by the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal for the past 15 years.

U.S. experts including David Asher, a top State Department investigator in Trump’s first administration, say that Triad money brokers at or above Chinaloa’s level command Western hemisphere money laundering for the Mexican cartels from Vancouver and Toronto.

An investigation by The Bureau into freshly unsealed indictments in the case of Chinaloa Chen, aka “Gucci,” aka “La China”—along with interviews with elite investigators—explains how she introduced senior 14K gangsters to top Sinaloa operators like Marisela “Iron Lady” Flores-Torruco. These findings shed new light on the war that Trump has started and on Canada and Mexico’s alleged complicity in China’s fentanyl trade.

DEA agents discovered, after seizing Chen’s phones and reading her WeChat texts, that she, her husband, Guatemala City casino owner Xizhi Li, and his associate Tao Liu had formed an elite network operating in a rarefied sphere of wealth and influence. They mingled with politicians and seemingly legitimate businessmen across North and Latin America, while orchestrating financial logistics to ship hundreds of tons of narcotics into the United States, collect drug-sale proceeds in cities across America, and launder the money through currency conversions and international trade spanning China, Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

“We found Chinese networks picking up drug money in over 22 states. They’d fly one-way to places like Georgia or Illinois, pick up cash, and drive it back to New York or the West Coast,” a U.S. expert with direct knowledge of investigations into Chinaloa Chen and Xizhi Li told The Bureau in a recent interview.

“Most people don’t realize that Chinese organized crime has been upstream in the drug trade for decades,” they said. “The money brokers based in Mexico City—that’s the directors of actual U.S.-based money brokers, at the higher level. There was a lady by the name of ‘Chinaloa’—a great example of a higher-level money broker who worked for the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG, and her husband was Triad and a high-level guy. Just like the guy (Tao Liu) that came into New York—these are the players who would do the wine-and-dining. They’re several nodes above the street-level distribution.”

According to U.S. court filings, Chen pleaded guilty on November 8, 2017, to one count of Conspiracy to Launder Monetary Instruments. While awaiting sentencing, she agreed to fully cooperate. The Agreed Statement of Facts describes how she and the Flores-Torruco DTO moved hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia through Panama and into Mexico, relying on Chen to ensure U.S. dollars were immediately available for new shipments—then launder the proceeds from sales in American cities back to Mexico. She kept a percentage of every transaction as compensation.

“Her role was to facilitate the availability of large sums of cash, often in United States Dollars, for the DTO to purchase new shipments of cocaine,” the filings say. “Chen communicated directly with Marisela Flores-Torruco about her organization’s financing needs, (and) would then communicate with individuals in the United States, Mexico, Colombia, and elsewhere, who could facilitate the availability of large sums of cash, often in USD.”

The evidence highlights Chen’s elite role as a financial facilitator—and by extension, the involvement of Chinese merchants—in supporting the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, according to DEA officials. They express the troubling belief that Chen’s movement of massive funds through Chinese bank accounts, combined with Beijing’s full visibility into her WeChat communications with Li and others, suggests China’s government is not only aware of but complicit in these laundering activities

Chinese Money Broker in Cartels

The Chinese money brokers play a significant role in funding the Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels by facilitating the laundering of drug proceeds. According to a DEA investigation, these brokers have established a network that processes large amounts of drug money, often with the assistance of Chinese underground banking systems. This network helps cartels move their profits from the United States to Mexico, providing a ready market for U.S. dollars in the U.S. and facilitating the transfer of funds to pay for goods and services needed by the cartels, such as precursor chemicals for fentanyl.

Chinese underground money exchanges in the U.S. assist cartels by providing a way to repatriate profits back to Mexico. Wealthy Chinese nationals who wish to transfer assets to the U.S. but are restricted by Chinese capital flight regulations often use these brokers to move funds. This activity has become a focal point in President Trump’s strategy to combat the fentanyl crisis, which includes advocating for criminal indictments of financial institutions and mass sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals involved in the fentanyl trade.

The involvement of Chinese brokers in the drug trade and money laundering operations has been highlighted in various reports and investigations, indicating a complex web of illegal activities that span across international borders.