MCLC: Bo Xilai's wife lead suspect in murder case

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Bo Xilai's wife lead suspect in murder case
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Source: NYT (4/10/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/world/asia/detained-party-official-facing
-ouster-from-politburo.html

Death of a Briton Is Thrust to Center of China Scandal
By SHARON LAFRANIER, JOHN F. BURNS, and JONATHAN ANSFIELD.

BEIJING ‹ The mysterious death of a 41-year-old British businessman in a
Chongqing hotel room late last year was thrust to the center of the
biggest political scandal to hit China¹s Communist Party in a generation
on Tuesday, as the authorities declared the death a murder and named the
wife of one of China¹s most powerful men the leading suspect.

The death of the businessman, Neil Heywood, initially attributed to
alcohol poisoning, is now considered an ³intentional homicide,² the Xinhua
news agency announced. That made the case the most sensational in a series
of charges against the family of Bo Xilai, who was until March the
Chongqing party chief and seen as one of the handful of rising leaders
slated to run China.

On Tuesday, Mr. Bo was suspended from his post on the Politburo, the
25-member body that runs China, and from the larger Central Committee, on
suspicion of serious disciplinary infractions, the government announced.
His wife, Gu Kailai, who is a lawyer, was being investigated in the
killing of Mr. Heywood.

Not since the purges after the crackdown on democracy protests in 1989 has
the Chinese leadership been exposed to so much turmoil. Excruciatingly for
top officials, who prize unity and secrecy above all, this one involves
foreigners in an embarrassingly intrusive way ‹ both the death of a
British citizen and also the attempt by a senior police official to seek
American asylum.

That official, Wang Lijun, a onetime close aide to Mr. Bo who was himself
under investigation for corruption, fled to the consulate of the United
States in Chengdu in February and spent more than 30 hours there. He said
Mr. Heywood had been poisoned and revealed what he knew about the death ‹
and about jockeying for power inside the country¹s closed political
system, several people briefed on the matter said.

Although he handed over a treasure trove of intelligence, Mr. Wang was
told he could not be granted asylum. He left the consulate and was taken
into custody, where he has been since.

Mr. Bo has also been under some form of confinement since mid-March, and
his wife, too, has been detained. No one representing any of the three
could be reached for comment.

Mr. Heywood was an elusive business consultant who married a Chinese woman
and carved a lucrative career in Beijing and Chongqing while keeping other
British businessmen guessing about how he made much of his money, and he
hinted of deep links to the Bo family.

When his body was found in a hotel room on Nov. 15 in Chongqing, the
³alcohol-poisoning² death certificate was issued, although friends said
Mr. Heywood rarely drank. His relatives said that they had been told he
died of a heart attack, and that the body was cremated with their consent,
without autopsy.

The announcement of an ³intentional homicide² appeared to surprise the
British government, which had seemed anxious in recent weeks to distance
itself from a major Chinese political scandal, saying that suspicions
about the death they had passed to the Chinese were those of other Britons
in China, not anything they could substantiate on their own.

After an urgent huddle with other British officials, William Hague, the
British foreign minister, told reporters in London: ³It¹s a death that
needs to be investigated, on its own terms and on its own merits, without
political considerations. So I hope they will go about it in that way, and
I welcome the fact that there will be an investigation.²

Xinhua¹s statement appeared to confirm one of the swirling rumors in the
case, that Mr. Heywood¹s death was linked to business dealings gone awry.
The Chinese news agency said Ms. Gu and her son, Bo Guagua, had had close
relations with Mr. Heywood but later had ³a conflict over economic
interests.² But Xinhua did not specify how Mr. Heywood died, or what
business interests were involved. The only other suspect in his death,
Zhang Xiaojun, was described as an ³orderly² working in Mr. Bo¹s home.

The shock of the Chinese announcement ‹ claiming that a member of the
ruling elite was linked through his wife to a possible murder, and that
the killing grew out of private business interests of the kind that have
made many Chinese officials rich ‹ had far-reaching implications for the
way that China is governed. The impact was amplified since China is facing
a once-in-a-decade shift in power this fall to a new generation of
leaders. Mr. Bo, 62, had become a contender for a seat in the inner
sanctum of power, the nine-member standing committee of the Communist
Party¹s Politburo.

A charismatic figure, Mr. Bo tried to build his political stature by
taking a page from the political playbook of Mao Zedong, presenting
himself as a populist attuned to the interests of ordinary people and
stirring up nostalgia for the hugely destructive Cultural Revolution of
the 1960s and ¹70s, waged in the name of ordinary people against the
Communist Party elite.

At the same time, Mr. Bo presided over a state-led economic boom in
Chongqing, a provincial-level metropolitan region in southwestern China,
and, detractors said, perverted the law enforcement process in what was
billed as a campaign against organized crime. As the son of the legendary
revolutionary leader Bo Yibo, he built a following among others with ties
to Mao, as well as those unhappy with the get-rich-quick culture of recent
decades ‹ among them, top generals and unreformed leftists in the
Communist elite.

With Mr. Bo¹s disgrace, top power holders in Beijing seem to have quashed
his bid for power.

³China is a socialist country ruled by law, and the sanctity and authority
of law shall not be trampled,² Xinhua said in its announcement of his
ouster on Tuesday, attributing the remarks to unnamed senior officials.
³Whoever has broken the law will be handled in accordance with law and
will not be tolerated, no matter who is involved.²

According to one person who said he was briefly shown a copy of
confidential information for party officials that was circulated on
Tuesday, Mr. Bo was faulted for failing to oversee underlings, a reference
to Mr. Wang, and mismanaging his family, a reference to the Heywood case,
and flouting party procedures in those and other cases.

Significantly, the party document did not suggest Mr. Bo was a murder
suspect, but rather implied he could have had a role in trying to cover up
the killing by obstructing attempts to report the case and stripping Mr.
Wang¹s police powers without party authorization.

The murder investigation appears to be based on information provided by
Mr. Wang, who as the top police official in Chongqing was one of Mr. Bo¹s
closest aides ‹ until he sought refuge at the American consulate. Mr. Wang
is now being investigated for treason for that, according to Chinese
sources familiar with the case, but is being credited with having come
forward with evidence in Mr. Heywood¹s death.

Before Mr. Heywood¹s death, Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang were already under
scrutiny by central disciplinary authorities over corruption and other
allegations, according to these sources, and to others with ties to senior
party figures. If so, the evidence of a murder would have come as an
opportune development in the inner-party struggle over the new leadership
lineup.

During more than 30 hours spent at the consulate, Mr. Wang told officials
that Ms. Gu had plotted to poison Mr. Heywood, and turned over a police
file with highly technical documents, according to people knowledgeable
about the case. But Mr. Wang, these people said, also apparently revealed
far more: an unprecedented trove of knowledge on the leadership struggle.

A man answering the door on Tuesday at the London home of Mr. Heywood¹s
mother, Ann Margaret Heywood, said she was not available for comment. But
10 days earlier, she rejected any suggestion that her son might have been
murdered, insisting that he had a heart attack, like his father at age 63.
³I don¹t know where it comes from, this stuff about his being poisoned and
so on,² she said. ³This is not about Neil, this is about Chinese politics,
and people¹s desire to write about Chinese politics. It is absolutely
horrid to be caught up in this side of things.²

Friends of Mr. Heywood in Britain and China have said that his habit of
giving little away about his business dealings left them with few clues as
to what may have gone wrong in his dealings with Mr. Bo¹s wife, Ms. Gu.

A maverick who chain-smoked, drove a Jaguar and loved sailing with his
wife and two children, Mr. Heywood told friends he met Mr. Bo in the
northeastern city of Dalian, where Mr. Bo served as mayor and in other
posts from 1993 to 2004. He told a friend, a British journalist named Tom
Reed, that he sent out letters of self-introduction to a flock of
officials and that Mr. Bo answered.

There also Mr. Heywood met Wang Lu, whom he married. Later on, Mr. Heywood
told friends, he was instrumental in getting the Bos¹ son Guagua into his
alma mater, Harrow, and in making the contacts that eased the son¹s way to
Oxford.

Ms. Gu, who wrote a book about how she won a case in the United States, is
listed as a partner in a Beijing law firm, but a spokesman there said she
had not practiced at the firm for 10 years.

Mr. Reed said in an interview that the exact nature of Mr. Heywood¹s
relations with the Bos was always unclear. ³I didn¹t get the impression it
was anything commercial,² Mr. Reed said. ³I got the impression it was much
more informal.² He said that three nights before Mr. Heywood¹s death, they
met for dinner in suburban Beijing. Mr. Heywood said he had not seen Mr.
Bo for about a year because of a falling out, and that back then ³someone
in Bo¹s inner circle was talking against him because of fears of his
influence over Bo.²

Mr. Heywood acknowledged that at one point he had been concerned, and even
considered leaving China with his family, Mr. Reed said. But, Mr. Reed
said: ³I got the impression that Bo had moved on, and Neil had moved on.
He couldn¹t have seemed less worried.²

Sharon LaFraniere and Jonathan Ansfield reported from Beijing, and John F.
Burns from London. Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting from London, and
Michael Wines from Beijing. Edy Lin, Li Bibo and Mia Li contributed
research.