Execution for Chinese tycoon

BEIJING - Yuan Baojing's remarkable rise from rural poverty to the head of a multi-billion dollar investment group ended at the weekend with a lethal injection after the stockmarket whizzkid was executed for hiring his brother and cousins to murder a failed hitman turned blackmailer.

Baojing, 40, his brother Yuan Baoqi and his cousin Yuan Baosen were executed shortly after a public trial in Liaoyang, Liaoning.

Another cousin, Yuan Baofu, was sentenced to death but the sentence was suspended, which means he may escape execution for good behaviour, the Beijing News reported.

A tale that gripped China's media centred on a former policeman who threatened to expose Baojing's attempts to murder a business associate who had cost him millions.

Yuan's execution came as a surprise as many believed that he would escape after he made a huge cash payment to the Government late last year.

China's unstoppable economic advance was good to Baojing, who hailed from the rural area near Liaoyang. He was the third child in a poor worker's family of five children.

His rise from rags to riches started after he graduated in 1989 and joined the China Construction Bank.

He honed his market player skills and quit three years later, registering his own company, Jianhou Group.

Within six months he had made 140,000 yuan ($27,600) profit, which he successfully invested. By 1996 he was worth over 3 billion yuan.

But Baojing suspected a friend and business associate of his, Liu Han, was in cahoots with a broker in Sichuan province, which had led to him losing US$12.2 million ($19.3 million) in failed trades on the futures market.

He met Wang Xing, who was a police officer at the time, in Beijing in 1996, where Wang said he would organise Liu's death for US$20,000.

Wang contracted Li Haiyang to do the job. He tracked Liu to a Sichuan hotel in February 1997 and fired two shots at him, but missed. Li fled but was later caught and jailed for life.

Soon after, the former policeman started asking Baojing for money, threatening to expose him over the hit. The hunter became the hunted.

Early in 2001, Baoqi, also a yuan billionaire, suggested to his brother that they should eliminate Wang. Baojing agreed, and gave him US$35,000 to pay the killers - Baofu and Baosen.

On November 15, 2001, the pair jumped Wang and stabbed him repeatedly, but didn't manage to kill him. He stepped up blackmail efforts and in 2003, Baojing stumped up a further US$25,000 to finish the job.

The killers followed Wang home late at night on October 4, 2003 and shot him twice with a hunting rifle. This time Wang went down for good.

Police traced the murder back to the Yuan brothers. Baojing's wife, Zhuo Ma, a famous Tibetan dancer and professor with the Beijing-based Central University for Nationalities, transferred shares in an Indonesian oilfield, worth $6 billion, to the Government one day before he was due to be executed on October 14.

The stay of execution caused widespread grumbles in China as it was believed he had used his money to buy his way out of execution. Zhuo said there were inconsistencies in how evidence in the case was handled and her husband had been wrongly convicted.

- INDEPENDENT