Society

Rich-list woman pleads for life

By Wu Yiyao (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-04-08 07:29

SHANGHAI - Thirty-year-old Wu Ying, who was once described as China's sixth-richest woman, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge on Thursday at her appeal against an earlier conviction and against the death sentence she was handed.

Wu pleaded guilty to the charge of illegal pooling of public deposits -- a type of illegal fund-raising -- in a court in Jinhua, Zhejiang province.

The lesser charge was agreed to by Dongyang city prosecutor's office and carries a lesser penalty.

Illegal fund-raising is divided into four categories, including the illegal pooling of public deposits and fraudulent fund-raising that she was convicted of at her first trial.

The maximum penalty for fraudulent fund-raising under the Criminal Law is death.

At her original trial, Wu was sentenced to death, a deprivation of her political rights for life and confiscation of all personal property in December 2009 by the Jinhua Intermediate People's Court.

The indictment against her when she appeared for the original trial said she had collected nearly 384 million yuan ($59 million) by fraudulently promising high returns.

Wu appealed to the Higher People's Court of Zhejiang in January 2010.

Her lawyer, Zhang Yanfeng, said he communicated with Wu before the court appearance on Thursday and they had agreed that she would continue to plead not guilty.

However, sina.com.cn, a popular information portal, reported that Wu may have changed her plea after realizing there was little hope of being found not guilty, prompting her to plead guilty to the lesser charge of illegal pooling of public deposits.

The fact that Wu plead guilty to a lesser charge will have no major impact on the future ruling from the Higher People's Court of Zhejiang province, said Zhang, according to sina.com.cn.

Zhang said it was hard to predict when the verdict of the appeal might be delivered, given the complexity of the case and its broad impact.

The focus of the trial on Thursday lay in whether the borrowed funds were used for a normal business operation or personal consumption, and whether the practice was fraudulent fund-raising or private borrowing, said Wu's father, Wu Yongzheng, who was quoted by China News Service.

Some alleged victims who were cited by the prosecution are understood to now be willing to testify that she did not cheat them.

Wu created Bense Holding Group and purchased more than 100 shops in Dongyang, Jinhua. She then borrowed 773 million yuan from 11 people and told them she would use the money to register companies, invest in projects, loan out or improve cash flow for her business. But she spent the money on real estate, cars, and personal consumption instead of paying off loans and incurred interest, the court heard during her first trial.

The first indictment said Wu borrowed the money with the intention of using it illegally.

Wu allegedly squandered the money and only set up companies when she was in debt. Prosecutors said she had no economic strength and no management capacity and did not intend to pay the money back.

In her written request for an appeal, Wu said she never intended to defraud and spent most of the borrowed money on the management of companies, leaving only a small amount for her personal use, according to yicai.com, a financial information portal.

She said all creditors were her friends and family and the borrowing was not fund-raising.

Wu's 3.6 billion yuan in assets led her to be listed in the 2006 Hurun Report as China's sixth-richest woman and its 68th-richest person, just four months before she was arrested in February 2007.