Update | ChinaLeaks: Exposé on Chinese elite’s offshore accounts comes at sensitive time
Family members of Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping, along with Tencent billionaire and China's richest woman, are among 20,000 people in Hong Kong, the mainland and Taiwan whose offshore holdings have been exposed
Relatives of at least five current and former members of China’s top leadership have been exposed as having offshore accounts, as part of a revelatory report by investigative journalists.
The leak, part of a package of 2.5 million files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, points to nearly 22,000 offshore clients with addresses in mainland China and Hong Kong and 16,000 offshore clients from Taiwan.
"China has become a leading market for offshore havens that peddle secrecy, tax shelters and streamlined international deal-making,” the report said. “Every corner of China’s economy, from oil to green energy and from mining to arms trading, appears in the ICIJ data.”
The anti-corruption crackdowns in China may have accelerated such trends
While offshore accounts do not imply illegal behaviour per se, the report comes at a crucial moment in China’s ongoing debate on the wealth amassed by family members of China’s top leaders.
It coincides with the trial of Xu Zhiyong, the founder of the New Citizen Movement, a grass-roots campaign which has called for the declaration of assets by government officials. Xu and other members of the movement stand trial this week on charges of “assembling a crowd to disrupt public order”.
Previous reports by Bloomberg and The New York Times have revealed the wealth of the families of President Xi Jinping and former Premier Wen Jiabao, as company records and stock exchange filings made the obscure dealings of China’s elite more transparent.
The ICIJ's revelations on Wednesday has shed further light into such family fortunes.
