Ling Jihua's wife planned to flee to Japan but was arrested

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-12-26

Gu Liping, right. (Internet photo)

Gu Liping, the wife of recently disgraced Chinese official Ling Jihua, has been arrested in Qingdao, Shandong province, on Wednesday, reports our Chinese-language sister paper China Times.

Gu was arrested while attempting to flee to Japan.

She was arrested after meeting with Li You, the CEO of tech conglomerate Founder Group, at the Lakeview Hotel in Beijing, according to overseas Chinese-language news outlet Mingjing News. The group has been a major source of funding for the Xishan Club, a clandestine organization exclusive to senior officials and wealthy businesspeople born in Shanxi that Ling established in 2007.

The club met once every three months and participating officials reportedly bought and sold positions during the meeting.

Li is rumored to have managed to evade arrest with help from the Chinese mafia. Before police showed up, he was said to have been discussing with Gu how to destroy evidence of the illicit organization's existence and planned to offer her a Japanese ID card and residency permit.

She was hired as chairperson, general manager and as a consultant by multiple IT companies reportedly due to her influential husband. Gu is also said to have used Youth Business China, the non-profit organization she founded in 2003 as a channel through which to launder money and to allow her an escape plan in the event the club was discovered. Gu was found to own two luxury houses worth US$500 million in total in Japan.

Since the existence of the Xishan Club was uncovered, multiple senior officials, such as former railway minister Liu Zhijun, have been investigated and sacked. Ling Jihua, who was head of the Communist Party of China's United Front Work Department and vice chairperson of the National Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, has been investigated for suspected serious disciplinary violations.

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