The billionaire founder and CEO of Chinese financial group China Renaissance Bao Fan, whose company reported missing in February 2023, has been arrested on suspicion of corruption and is in police custody. On this subject informed The Economic Observer, citing sources.
According to them, on February 7, Bao Fan was arrested by employees of the Communist Party of China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, one of the country’s main organs for combating corruption and abuse. In early May, the businessman’s arrest was extended for three months.
In mid-February, the Board of Directors of China Renaissance informed that the owner of a majority stake in Bao Fan company does not get in touch. The company noted that it did not know if the billionaire’s disappearance was related to the bank’s business and operations. Shares of China Renaissance on the back of this news tumbled more than 20%.
A few days later, the company reported that Bao Fan was cooperating with Chinese authorities in an investigation by “certain authorities.” Source Reuters reported that Bao Fan was detained in connection with the investigation of his colleague, the former chairman of China Renaissance Kong Lin.
CNN notes that Bao Fan’s disappearance coincided with major anti-corruption scrutiny in the financial sector, which affected more than a dozen top executives from China’s largest financial institutions.
Under investigation to hit including the former chairman of the board of directors of China Everbright Group holding Li Xiaopeng, the head of the Shanghai branch of the Export-Import Bank of China, the head of the main Chinese insurance company China Life Insurance, Wang Bin and the Shanghai Gold Exchange.
Bao Fan founded China Renaissance in 2005 after banking careers at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. The billionaire is considered a “titan” of China’s tech industry, with numerous deals that have shaped the country’s online consumer economy. In 2018, Bao claimed that China Renaissance provided various services to 70% of Internet companies known to Chinese users.
At the end of 2020, the founder of Alibaba, billionaire Jack Ma, disappeared from public view. Shortly before, he had criticized Chinese regulators, accused state-owned banks of a “pawnbroker mentality” and called for new players in the financial sector capable of lending to the poor on guarantee. In November 2022, the Financial Times reported that Jack Ma had left China and was living in Tokyo.
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