After reaching a settlement with British investigative authorities, the former head of the “DeYoo” group, Tian Wenjun and his wife, have had their assets in the UK officially confiscated. The scale of these assets amounts to 12 million pounds (approximately 110 million yuan), which is less than one percent of the amount recognized by the authorities as proceeds from criminal activities in China.
On December 10th, the National Crime Agency (NCA) of the United Kingdom announced that due to the couple’s inability to provide a reasonable explanation for the source of their substantial assets, Tian Wenjun and his wife, Hao Jiangbo, had their assets worth 12 million pounds in the UK, including two luxury properties in the Hampstead area of London, two student apartments in Coventry, and funds in multiple bank accounts, officially seized.
The proceeds from these assets will be shared by the UK Treasury and the NCA, with specific disposal methods including supporting local community projects, enhancing public safety facilities, continuing the fight against organized crime, and potentially returning funds to the victims.
The announcement states that Tian Wenjun and Hao Jiangbo are still Chinese citizens.
The NCA suspects that these assets were obtained through large-scale financial fraud in China and money laundering crimes in overseas jurisdictions including the UK and Jersey.
Throughout the legal process, Tian Wenjun and Hao Jiangbo have maintained that they were not involved in any criminal activities, and the latest ruling by the UK High Court also found insufficient evidence to support the money laundering allegations.
According to reports by the “Daily Economic News,” 50-year-old Tian Wenjun was the former richest man in Shanxi, controlling multiple companies within the “DeYoo” group in Jinzhong, Shanxi. Over the years, they engaged in illegal financing and loans totaling nearly 270 billion yuan from 11 financial institutions including multiple rural credit cooperatives and city commercial banks. The fund chain collapsed after the illegal fundraising was exposed in 2017, posing significant financial risks to the local area and triggering an anti-corruption storm in the Shanxi financial system.
Even before the official investigation, Tian Wenjun and his wife had been preparing to flee since 2015, bringing their two children to the UK through the investor immigration program and transferring a substantial amount of assets to the UK. In July 2022, the family began the process of naturalization as British citizens.
Starting from June 2020, a major corruption case erupted in the financial sector of Shanxi, with the trigger being the financial risks caused by the “DeYoo” group.
A corruption film aired by the Chinese Communist Party in January 2023 revealed a systemic anti-corruption storm in the financial sector of Shanxi province, involving rural credit cooperatives, city commercial banks, the Jinzhou Bank, financial regulatory authorities, and financial companies. Several rural credit cooperatives and city commercial banks were heavily impacted, with a total of 20 public officials, including several top officials, receiving bribes from the “DeYoo” group amounting to over two billion yuan.
In order to evade the regulatory oversight of the China Banking Regulatory Commission on credit concentration, Tian Wenjun established multiple enterprises that provided mutual guarantees for each other, falsified accounting reports to meet the loan conditions of banks. By doing so, one enterprise could secure a loan of 2 million, and with ten enterprises, they could secure 20 million.
In 2017, the “DeYoo” group officially collapsed, dragging down two groups that took over the debt of over one hundred billion.
In the middle of 2020, a corruption case related to the “DeYoo” group erupted in the Shanxi rural credit system, with illegal loans and embezzlement causing a loss of several billion yuan. An official investigation found that the total amount of ill-gotten gains from public officials involved in the financial institutions and regulatory departments totaled 2.789 billion yuan.
One day in May 2022, when Hao Jiangbo deposited £69,500 (approximately 640,000 yuan) of cash into a Barclays Bank account in London, it triggered an anti-money laundering review, ultimately leading to a transnational investigation by the NCA.
In November 2023, the Shanxi Rural Credit Union officially transformed into the Shanxi Rural Commercial Joint Bank. However, Tian Wenjun, the actual controller of the “DeYoo” group, remains at large.
According to “Jiemian News” in September of this year, even before the official investigation, Tian Wenjun and his wife had begun applying for the Tier 1 investor visa program through the London-based asset management company Dolfin Financial (UK), starting from July 2017. Dolfin Financial (UK) invested over 10 million pounds in the UK on behalf of the client, allegedly obtained by Tian Wenjun through selling his shares in an investment group.
On April 26, 2020, when Tian Wenjun and his wife were already overseas, they faced legal proceedings in China. In December 2020, Ren Dong Holdings, controlled by Tian Wenjun’s family, lost approximately 25.5 billion yuan in market value within 20 days.
Before 2020, Tian Wenjun’s family had obtained permanent residency in the UK. On June 30, 2021, the Financial Conduct Authority of the UK announced the takeover of Dolfin Financial (UK) due to serious financial crime risks within the ongoing Tier 1 program, as well as the company’s failure to implement necessary corrections.
Subsequently, the NCA froze £5.7 million in cash and multiple assets of the couple and their associated companies in two civil investigations.
Two years later, the UK High Court issued an order based on the NCA’s application, requiring them to disclose relevant funding sources.
On January 5 of this year, Tian Wenjun and his wife applied to revoke the disclosure order, which the UK High Court began to review four months later.
In November of this year, the National Crime Agency of the UK officially filed for a civil recovery order against Tian Wenjun and his wife in the UK courts.
The international settlement is still ongoing. A British netizen commented: the assets confiscated in the UK are just the tip of the iceberg. Hopefully, they will be expelled from the UK.