Newsmaker

China's one-time richest man jailed for 14 yrs

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-05-18 11:46

File photo of Huang Guangyu. [Agencies]

China's one-time richest man and the founder of a major retail chain was jailed for 14 years on Tuesday for bribery, insider trading and illegal business dealings, media reported.

Huang Guangyu was also fined 600 million yuan ($88 million) and he had another 200 million yuan worth of property confiscated, Xinhua News Agency said.

The brief story did not say whether others who had been charged in the case, including Huang's wife, had also been sentenced.

Huang, who made his fortune by founding and building up GOME Electrical Appliances Holdings Ltd, dubbed by local media as China's Best Buy, was detained in November 2008 during a police investigation of stock market manipulation allegations.

Related readings:  Trial starts for China's once-richest man  Huang Guangyu appears in court in Beijing  Gome China unit gets Beijing rap for bribery  Gome ex-chairman Huang charged with bribery

The investigation gradually grew wider, ensnaring government officials and police who had been assigned to fight financial crime.

Huang, who is in his early 40s and had a net worth of $6.3 billion in 2008, was ranked first on Hurun's China Rich List for that year. But Huang built his fortune from humble beginnings, having been raised in a poor family in Guangdong province.

He moved to Beijing in his late teens with his brother and set up a home appliances distribution firm with 30,000 yuan and founded GOME in 1987.

GOME has been trying to separate itself from Huang, changing its logo, appointing a new chairman and selling a nearly 25 percent stake to US private equity firm Bain Capital in a $418 million deal last June.

As of the end of 2009, Huang still held roughly one third of GOME's total outstanding shares, worth $1.9 billion, according to Thomson One Analytics.