Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma related to intimidation campaigns with the Chinese regime

The Guardian suggested that the Chinese regime invited a terror campaign by Alibaba’s billionaire co-founder Jack MA to urge businessmen to help clear a senior official.

The businessman can only be called “H” because they fear revenge on their family in China, and he faces a series of threats from the Chinese state to try to get him home from France where he lives. They included a series of calls, his sister’s arrest and red notices issued through Interpol, an international alert.

The climax of April 2021 is a Massachusetts call. Jack Ma said: “They said I was the only one who could convince you to return.”

H, I have known MA for many years and have recorded my phone number. He also did the same for the calls he received from other friends and those received by Chinese security officials, who called a few weeks ago, all with the same information.

Records of these calls, as well as other legal records, presented in French courts, provide rare insights into some of the ways the Chinese regime has exerted its influence in the world. The documents detail threats, adopting a combination of legal mechanisms and extrajudicial pressures, that even those outside the country’s borders can control.

The findings are part of the China International Alliance of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) target project, in which journalists document ways the Chinese regime tracks and suppresses dissent abroad. The team included Guardians as well as Radio France and Lemond, who received transcripts and other legal paperwork.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the UK said: “China’s so-called “transnational repression” is pure fabrication.”

Extradition threat

H, a 48-year-old Singaporean-born citizen, was in Bordeaux, France when he received a call from Massachusetts. A year ago, Chinese police arrested a warrant for H’s arrest for financial crimes. China then issued a notice to him through the Interpol International Criminal Alert System. French authorities confiscated his passport while considering whether to extradite him.

The transcript shows that during the call, MA suggested that if all the questions H would help prosecute Sun Lijun, a Chinese politician Sun Lijun, who favored China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP). The Sun was sued for bribery and manipulation of the stock market. “They are doing it all for the sun, not for you,” Mama said.

Former Deputy Security Minister Sun was commissioned in 2017 to oversee Hong Kong’s security during a massive protest against Beijing’s crackdown on democracy and freedoms. He was arrested a year before H began answering the phone. Later, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) condemned the Sun for “having severely inflated political ambitions” and “arbitrarily disagree with the Central Policy Guidelines.”

He became one of many top officials in President Xi Jinping’s radical anti-corruption campaign, a tool for XI to clear its political rivals.

‘You have no other solution’

The transcript of the phone shows that the horse was unhappy to be attracted to the incident. “Why did you let me get involved?” he asked H.

Like the sun, horses also lost favor with Xi Jinping’s regime. After a speech in October 2020, he criticized China’s financial regulators, who had been repeatedly sanctioned, including a $2.8 billion fine, and he disappeared from the public eye.

Call H six months later. Ma explained on the phone that Chinese security officials had contacted him. Mama tells H. “They spoke to me very seriously. They said they promised that if you come back now they will give you a chance to be exempted…you have no other solution…noose will tighten more and more.”

Later, MA called H’s lawyer to reiterate the information.

H did not return to China, and his lawyer extraditioned him in a French court.

“We know that if H returns to China, he himself will be arrested, detained, and may be tortured until he agrees to testify … and most of his assets, his company stocks, are likely to be transferred to others as well.”

According to Safeguard Defenders, the conviction rate for criminal cases in China is 99.98% among the organizations in which the Chinese regime investigates abuse. It has documented how forced disappearances and torture are prevalent in the judicial system.

A year before the MA conference call, his contact with credit platform Tuandai.com issued a year to conduct money laundering charges against H in H. The founder of the company was sentenced to 20 years in prison for illegal fundraising. Chinese police believe that at the beginning of the investigation, he tried to cover up some of the stolen funds. H, the investment company, was accused of helping some money abroad through the companies he controlled.

H’s lawyer told the French court there was no evidence that he knew the source of the funds was questionable. H protested his innocence during a call to a friend recorded in a French court document. “None of this is true,” he said.

The Chinese government issued a red notice to H through the international police regulator Interpol. This marked him as a potential criminal in police forces around the world, meaning he was unable to travel. “It’s like a pin through a butterfly,” said Ted R Bromund, a legal case expert witness involving the Interpol process. “It puts someone down and locks them in place so they don’t escape.”

Although the red notice is targeted at serious offenders, it has long warned that they can abuse it. British lawyer Rhys Davies recently investigated the government’s cross-border repression, and the red notice was “often used and abused by authoritarian regimes to target dissidents and opponents overseas.” He called the system “authoritarian sniper rifle because it is long distance, targeted and very effective”.

Experts say that while other countries, including Russia, Türkiye and Rwanda, have also been abused, China’s strategy is different. Instead of relying on extradition, the Chinese authorities use Interpol to locate people and then increase pressure to threaten them and families to return home until individuals agree to “voluntarily” return.

An Interpol spokesman said the system means that thousands of world’s “serious criminals” are arrested each year. They added: “Interpol knows that red notices are a powerful tool for law enforcement cooperation and are fully aware of their potential impact on the individuals involved, which is why we have a powerful and continually evaluated and updated process to ensure proper use of our system.”

“Psychological Warfare”

When H waited in France, trapped by the legal process that began with the Red Announcement, he received calls from friends and security officials, what his lawyers called “a psychological warfare that goes all out.” Sometimes, the tone is friendly and promises that all charges will be removed. Other times, this is more threatening.

With the transcript of the convening of the unit’s deputy investigator’s prosecution against the Sun, Wei Fujie suggested that he promise H that if he returns, he would “no prosecution now, plus the red notice of cancellation”.

A friend called H and said, “In three days, your whole family will be arrested!” A few days later, H’s sister was arrested in China.

His case is far from unusual. ICIJ’s China Target Project records details of 105 transnational repression targets in 23 countries. Half of them said their families returned home and were harassed through intimidation and interrogation by police or national security officials.

Rehabilitation

When H’s case was filed with the Bordeaux Court of Appeal in July 2021, the court denied the extradition request. Later, the red notice was removed from the Interpol system. H’s lawyer successfully argued that the extradition request was issued for political purposes to force testimony to the Sun.

Sun was convicted of manipulating stock markets, bribery and other crimes without H interfering in the prosecution. He was sentenced to death.

According to Chinese media reports, H cannot trade or work in China, cannot repay loans or rents for luxury goods, but is trapped in a total of $135 million in debt. He declined to comment when the guardian approached.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the UK said: “China has always respected the sovereignty of other countries and cooperated with other countries in accordance with the law.”

Related: Revealed: Online campaign urges biggest rights to attack China’s opponents in Britain

The MA representative raised questions about his identity on the phone. The Guardian spoke with H’s lawyer, who said he had known billionaires for years before the call, and he undoubtedly had the caller as mom. Throughout the legal process, his attorney challenged the Red Notice without any doubt about the identity of the caller.

The horse did not respond further to the guardian.

Earlier this year, he gave a vibrant applause at a business leader meeting in the Beijing lobby, a sign of the billionaire public recovery in local media.

H’s lawyer Gérard-Rodriguez said: “We’ve seen and learned about Jack Ma’s disappearance… This man is considered unshakable, extremely powerful, very connected in every country in every country in the world, completely disappeared for months, then recovered, and then solicited his loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.

“In the end, H’s expectations are the same thing… He will come back to express his loyalty to show where he is on.”