The missing Van Gogh and the mystery of the abducted and convicted Chinese superfinancier – Corriere.it

Where did it go Most expensive Van Gogh painting? Who is offering it to the market for $70 million? investigation of new York Times followed the traces of the masterpiece, which lead to aSecret operation of Chinese police,

Up for auction at Sotheby’s in Manhattan, one evening in November 2014 «Still life, vase with daisies and poppies»One of the last works painted by Vincent van Gogh before his death in 1890. The starting price of $ 23 million, the room is full and follow each other: 32, 42, 48 million. As always, you may also participate by telephone. And China calls whoever makes the best offer: $62 million, the highest amount ever at auction for a still life by the Flemish master,

Who brought Van Gogh home? In the art market, buyers often remain anonymous. But this time the Chinese collector immediately came out with a flurry of hilarious interviews with the Beijing press. His name was Wang Zhongjun, the filmmaker who recently financed the war film ‘Fury’ with Brad Pitt, Gone are the days when Chinese entrepreneurs vie with multimillion-dollar luxury investments in the West, spending fortunes on Hollywood studios, European football clubs, Champagne vineyards and works of art. Everything served for the glory of the Communist Party, capable of creating the second economic superpower in the world. The order was meant to show that any world commodity could be bought from China at any cost.

Producer Wang Zhongjun served as the spokesperson for that Mandarin pride campaign. For a few months he kept the painting at his home in Hong Kong. Then all trace of the record’s stable life disappeared. Wang said he did not buy it himself, but did not want to reveal the names of the partners.

Middlemen, triangles, tax havens, potential money laundering are the dark side of the international art market.

The Sotheby’s invoice for $61,765,000 was made to Hailong Liu, owner of a financial institution domiciled in the British Virgin Islands., actually it Liu lives in a popular tower block in Shanghai and according to investigative reporters new York Times he’s just a person, For whom? the tracks lead xiao jianhuaThe Chinese superfinancier with $6 billion in assets in his portfolio and managed the affairs of prominent political families in the People’s Republic of China.

The extraordinary story of Xiao Jianhua: In 1989 he was a very young leader of student protests in Beijing, but he survived the Tiananmen crackdown. Considered a financial genius, not yet thirty he had established a network of brokerage agencies, banks, insurance companies, invested in coal mines and the real estate industry. In 2017, at the age of 46, Xiao was the owner of the ‘Tomorrow Group’, a collection of companies that counts members of Beijing’s political establishment among its members. Better to work away from the spotlight. Xiao lived in a mega-suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong, surrounded by a team of female bodyguards

, All was well, until one night in January 2017, when A group of men in plain clothes came to his door, dispersed the bodyguards and took the financier Mighty in a wheelchair, probably drunk (this is a reconstruction of the hotel’s surveillance cameras).

was processed by Special Agent of the Chinese Police, which did not have jurisdiction in Hong Kong under the principle of ‘one country, two systems’. But Beijing’s long arm certainly hasn’t stopped with these details when national political security is at stake. Xiao apparently knew a great deal about secret wealth amassed by relatives of powerful communist mandarins. Perhaps he knew too much.

A very strange message appeared on the website of his financial company: “They didn’t kidnap me and take me to China, I’m abroad for treatment, I’ll be back after treatment.” Darkness again. Only a few years later, in 2019, it became known that the magician of high finance “agreed to cooperate with the authorities” in the investigation of games on the Shanghai Stock Exchange., The “treatment” ended in August 2022, when a Chinese court announced a 13-year prison sentence for the financier “for market manipulation and corruption of government officials”. Value of illegal operations: $20 billion.

And Van Gogh? It was definitely never in the hands of figurehead Liu. Was it Xiao’s or producer Wang’s? It is not known, it is only known that Wang is also doing poorly, he had to put an end to his film business. to the journalists of nyt It turns out that the “Vase of Daisies and Poppies,” which no one has seen since 2017, has been privately re-listed for $70 million, But who keeps it in the vault?