Yuan Baojing
Yuan Baojing (simplified Chinese: 袁宝璟; traditional Chinese: 袁寶璟; pinyin: Yuán Bǎojǐng) (16 February 1966 – 17 March 2006) was the president of the Jianhao Group and a Beijing-based multi-millionaire. In March 2006, he and two accomplices were sentenced to death by a Liaoyang court for the October 2003 murder of Wang Xing, a hitman he had hired to kill a rival businessman in Sichuan, who had caused his company to lose $13 million in futures trading. The hitman later turned informer. There were controversies surrounding the sentence, methods of interrogation and whether there was sufficient evidence implicating Yuan in the murder. Yuan was put to death just fifteen minutes after the sentence was pronounced, together with his brother, Yuan Baoqi, and cousin, Yuan Baosen. He was the wealthiest convict to be executed in PRC history.
Yuan was found guilty of the murder in January 2005 and was due to die by firing squad on 14 October 2005. After the date passed and the sentence was not carried out, it was rumoured that the day before the execution date his wife transferred ownership of shares worth 49.5 billion yuan to the government. The assets comprised equities including a 40 percent stake in an Indonesian oil company held by Yuan through a Hong Kong firm. Another conjecture of the reason was Yuan revealed misconducts of a high ranking Liaoning official.
Yuan Baojing, along with Yuan Baoqi and Yuan Baosen, was executed by lethal injection shortly after the trial. Yuan Baofu, also sentenced to death, had his sentence suspended for two years.
The Jianhao scholarship, donated by Yuan, is seen by many as the top scholarship in China. Since 1996, over 900 college students across the country had received the scholarship. Yuan also established at least two elementary schools in Tibet.
Yuan Baojing's wife, Zhuoma, an ethnic Tibetan choreographer spent nearly all her husband's assets to buy him five months of life.
References
- Money now buys him life, The Standard: China's Business Newspaper (Hong Kong), 3 November 2005.
- Billionaire executed for contract murder, Xinhua, from "Shanghai Daily", 18 March 2006.
- China Executes Former Business Tycoon, Voice of America, 18 March 2006.