Recently, Gu Chujun, the founder of the mainland Green Cool Group and former chairman of Kelon Electric, publicly released a whistleblower letter stating that he was wrongly imprisoned many years ago, and the local government took advantage of the situation to plunder his billions of assets. He requested current Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to help return all of his property.
On August 8th, independent commentator Cai Shunkun published Gu Chujun’s whistleblower letter on Platform X. The whistleblower letter mentioned that he had written a letter to Li Keqiang on November 28, 2023, highlighting the incident where his 60.67% share of Yangzhou Yaxing Bus Co., Ltd. was seized by the Yangzhou City government in Jiangsu Province on unjust criminal charges.
Gu Chujun stated, “Over twenty years ago, I brought nearly two billion US dollars back to invest in China, and at the peak, I simultaneously owned five listed companies. Unfortunately, I was wrongfully imprisoned because I loaned money to Kelon Electric and when I tried to retrieve it, I was falsely accused of embezzlement. Despite the audit result showing Kelon owed me 293 million yuan, I was wrongfully sentenced for embezzlement.”
He mentioned that during his imprisonment, “Provincial and municipal governments such as Jiangsu, Anhui, Hubei, Henan, Jiangxi took the opportunity to plunder my stock holdings and management rights in these companies in those areas, as well as the remaining company’s equity, land, factories, mechanical equipment, and all other assets, leaving me bankrupt now.”
After his release, following the National compensation guidelines from the Supreme Court towards these stock equity claims, his administrative compensation demands were rejected by the Yangzhou City government. Subsequently, his administrative review application to Jiangsu Province was also rudely denied.
On March 26th this year, he applied for an administrative ruling from the Chinese State Council, yet over three months later, a subordinate department of the State Council ruled not to accept his “Administrative Ruling Application”. As a result, he reported to Li Keqiang about these unlawful acts and administrative inaction by his subordinates.
Gu Chujun emphasized that the most significant challenge in national management at present is the youth employment issue. With the widespread application of artificial intelligence, job opportunities are decreasing, while millions of university graduates and a substantial number of technical school graduates are waiting for employment annually, leading to enormous employment pressure with a growing trend. Resolving the employment issue can only be achieved through private enterprise investments, as private enterprises employ over 80% of the workforce nationwide.
He suggested that the State Council and local governments allocate 500 billion RMB, prioritizing addressing the compensation issues caused by wrongful verdicts and cases for the top 500 private enterprises. This would demonstrate some exemplary cases to the Chinese people and private entrepreneurs while sending a clear signal to the private entrepreneurs carrying hundreds of billions of wealth out of China.
He stated that domestic and overseas private entrepreneurs facing similar concerns about their property are closely monitoring whether the government can rectify the habitual looting of private enterprise assets by local officials, which directly affects the resolution of youth employment issues.
In 2002, Gu Chujun invested 560 million RMB to acquire Kelon, which was then one of China’s top four refrigerator industry giants. When Kelon was incurring losses of over two billion, he took over the company, turning the losses into profits within a year. In 2003, he acquired a 20.03% stake in Meiling Electric, and invested over 400 million to take control of Yaxing Bus. Over the years, Gu Chujun controlled five listed companies, owning refrigerator brands like Kelon, Rongsheng, Meiling, and Genor.
In 2005, Gu Chujun was accused of embezzling a large amount of Kelon Electric’s cash flow for various acquisitions, suspected of violation, leading to a formal investigation. In 2008, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined 6.8 million yuan. After seven years of incarceration, he was released ahead of time on September 6, 2012. Just a week after his release, he held a press conference to proclaim his innocence, demanding the reversal of the Kelon case and the recovery of his assets seized by the court.
The cases of Gu Chujun and others have been seen by the economic and business sectors as typical examples of the Chinese Communist Party’s tendency to “add crimes” on private entrepreneurs. Reports from Hong Kong media at the time indicated that the masterminds behind the wrongful case of Gu Chujun were former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang, then Supreme People’s Procuratorate Director Cao Jianming, as well as senior officials from Guangdong Province, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and the China Petrochemical Corporation.