MCLC: French architect and the Bo Xilai case

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: French architect and the Bo Xilai case
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Source: NYT (6/22/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/world/asia/cambodia-says-it-will-not-extr
adite-french-architect-to-china.html

Cambodia Won¹t Extradite Figure in Bo Xilai Case
By KEITH BRADSHER 

HONG KONG ‹ Cambodia¹s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that the country
had no plans to extradite to China or France a detained French architect
with links to a disgraced Chinese politician and his wife, but that the
architect was not yet being set free, either.

Kuy Kong, a spokesman for the Cambodian Foreign Ministry, said that he did
not know how long the architect, Patrick Devillers, would be held, or why
he was being held.

Hor Nahong, Cambodia¹s foreign minister, said late Thursday night that Mr.
Devillers was still being investigated. The police in Cambodia¹s capital,
Phnom Penh, said earlier in the week that Mr. Devillers had been arrested
about two weeks ago at China¹s request. Chinese government offices were
closed on Friday in observance of a national holiday, and the Chinese
Foreign Ministry declined earlier in the week to comment on Mr. Devillers.

The French Embassy in Phnom Penh had no immediate comment.

Under Cambodia¹s extradition agreement with China, the Chinese government
has up to 60 days after Mr. Devillers¹s detention to provide legal
documents to support any extradition request. The agreement, one of only a
handful that Cambodia has concluded with any country, allows the
extradition of foreigners who are not citizens of either Cambodia or China.

The immigration police in Phnom Penh said that they were holding Mr.
Devillers near the airport, but declined to comment further on his case.

Mr. Devillers has been linked to Bo Xilai, a powerful Chinese politician
until he was removed as Communist Party secretary of Chongqing and
suspended from the party¹s Politburo, and Mr. Bo¹s wife, Gu Kailai. Ms. Gu
is being investigated on suspicion of involvement in the killing of a
British businessman, Neil Heywood, who had reportedly been engaged in
international financial transactions on Ms. Gu¹s behalf.

When Mr. Bo was mayor of Dalian in the 1990s, Mr. Devillers helped him
rebuild the city. Mr. Devillers also started a company with Ms. Gu in
Britain in 2000, although the company appears to have done very little.
Mr. Devillers used the address of Ms. Gu¹s law firm in Beijing when he and
his father set up a real estate company in Luxembourg in 2006, right after
the younger Mr. Devillers left China and shortly before he moved to
Cambodia.

Mr. Devillers denied in an e-mail last month that he had been engaged in
any illegal financial transactions.
Mr. Devillers comes across in person as a gentle, low-key artist with
little interest in money. Until his arrest, he lived in a rented,
two-story house on a narrow lot in downtown Phnom Penh.

The house was sparsely furnished with heavy wood furniture that was fairly
new but designed to resemble antiques. One of his few small luxuries was
an espresso maker using prepackaged cups of ground coffee, which he was
quick to offer visitors.

Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a specialist in French-Chinese relations at Hong
Kong Baptist University, had predicted on Wednesday that Cambodia would
not hand Mr. Devillers over to China, even though China is now the largest
aid donor to Cambodia.

³Although China may be able to put more money on the table, the Cambodian
elites are still closely linked both personally, financially ‹ their money
is there ‹ and emotionally to France,² Mr. Cabestan wrote in an e-mail.
³So my conclusion is that Cambodia will probably not honor China¹s
request.²