On Wednesday, May 8, the Nicaraguan parliament revoked a century-long canal concession to Chinese companies, putting an end to a sensational scam by a mysterious Chinese businessman.
Twelve years ago, then-President Daniel Ortega granted the China-based Wang Jing’s Xinwei Group a 100-year concession to build and operate the “Nicaraguan Canal,” connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
The project was initially hailed as a means to lift Central American countries out of poverty, with the Nicaragua Canal seen as a competitor to the Panama Canal. However, it was later revealed that this ambitious project was a massive “scam” that resulted in billions of yuan in losses for numerous Chinese investors.
The canal project never even commenced construction. The Chinese company Xinwei Group, tasked with the canal project, was delisted in 2021.
The “Nicaraguan Canal” project was estimated to cost $50 billion, facing opposition from local farmers and environmentalists from the outset. Over the years, the entire project employed fewer than 30 people and only managed to build a dusty road of about 10 kilometers.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ortega submitted a proposal to the parliament to abolish the concession, which was nearly unanimously approved.
Medardo Mairena, a leader of the anti-Nicaraguan Canal project opposition in the United States, remarked, “It’s regrettable that Ortega realized his failure in confiscating farmers’ land ten years later.”
The Nicaragua Canal project, due to its high complexity and large investment, was frequently mentioned but no one dared to act upon it. In 2012, former Beijing bathhouse owner Wang Jing emerged as the actual controlling person and chairman of Xinwei, taking on the mantle of leading the Nicaragua Canal project with a claimed investment of $50 billion.
This grand scheme quickly made headlines worldwide, with Wang Jing having no publicly known background or news associated with him at the time, leading overseas media to label him as the “most mysterious businessman in China.”
Nonetheless, leveraging the digging of the canal, Wang Jing managed to list Xinwei on the A-share market successfully, with the company’s market value soaring to 200 billion yuan, being included in the Shanghai Stock Exchange 50 Index.
According to Forbes’ “Billionaires List,” Wang Jing, the chairman of the Xinwei Group, reached his peak wealth of $6.9 billion in 2015.
Subsequently, Wang Jing continued his fraudulent activities in China, causing an average loss of nearly 230,000 yuan per shareholder in 2019.