Cuban born Sugar tycoon Alfonso Fanjul now open to investing in Cuba under ‘right circumstances’

By Peter Wallsten, Manuel Roig-Franzia and Tom Hamburger, Sunday, February 2, 4:05 PM 

www.laromanabayahibenews.com

Alfonso Fanjul fled Cuba as a young man, leaving behind his family’s mansions and vast sugarcane fields as they were being wrested away by the communist Castro regime.
In exile in the United States, he built an even larger sugar empire, amassing one of North America’s great fortunes and befriending members of Congress and presidents who benefited from his largesse. The sting of his family’s forced departure from Cuba led him to become one of the principal funders of the U.S. anti-Castro movement.

Keep reading on The Washington Post >>

Chinese billionaire arrested for crossing ’red line’ of political activism

Bao Fan/ Imaginechina, file

Venture capitalist Wang Gongquan [December 2009]

By By Eric Baculinao, NBC News Producer

 BEIJING – In a crackdown on dissent ahead of a crucial Communist Party gathering next month, Chinese authorities on Sunday formally arrested a billionaire venture capitalist who has turned his wealth toward supporting human rights issues.

The detention of Wang Gongquan, who was held on suspicion of disturbing public order, sends a strong signal that China’s new leadership will not tolerate any member of the rising entrepreneurial elite using their resources to agitate for democratic reform.

Gongquan, 52, who made a fortune from real estate and investment management, is one of the first Chinese billionaires to cross a “red line” that forbids the ascendant entrepreneurial class from challenging the Communist party’s supremacy.

“I was informed by Beijing prosecutors on the phone that Wang Gongquan was arrested yesterday,” his lawyer Chen Youxi wrote in a microblog post Monday.  “The family has not yet been notified; the prosecution said it would deliver [the notice] today.”

Wang was first seized by the police last month for questioning on suspicion of trying to “gather a crowd to disrupt order in public places.” The arrest order paves the way for the filing of criminal charges and a court trial. 

Wang is known to be a supporter of the New Citizens Movement, a loose association of professionals and other urbanites advocating free speech and other rights enshrined in China’s constitution.  The group, which occasionally organizes dinners to discuss national issues, is also calling for greater government transparency and disclosure of officials’ assets.

“I admire Wang Gongguan’s integrity and courage, but he might have crossed the ‘red line,’” said Hu Xingdou, referring to the unwritten rule that China’s rising business class should not engage in political activism.

“China’s politics is no fun, it is a dangerous game,” said Hu, an outspoken blogger and professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology.  “Wang’s case is a warning from the government that the wealthy merchant class should not use their money to support causes against the government.”

“Wang Gongquan represents a certain danger because he could use his money to support public interest causes and to help others,” observed political analyst Chen Ziming, who himself served years in prison for his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement. 

A prominent professor at Peking University has become the latest target in the Chinese government's crackdown on dissent. Xia Yee- Liang was officially sacked because his teaching was ruled as sub-standard, but he says he was persecuted for his outspoken criticism of the country's communist rulers. ITV's Angus Walker reports.

“But even if Wang is arrested and put in jail, he is not alone. There are others like him, so the government action might not be effective,” argued Chen. He added that the New Citizens Movement doesn’t pose a serious challenge because “it is not even advocating a multi-party system.”

For Professor Hu, however, Wang Gongquan’s case is an “isolated case” that does not portend any long-term threat from the moneyed class 

“The Communist Party will not allow a politically strong merchant class, China’s middle class will remain weak-boned,” Hu said. He added that Wang and his ilk “could have better used their efforts to promote China’s further reform and opening up in the economic field.”

Despite the lack of serious threats, however, authorities are taking no chances ahead of next month’s Communist Party plenum that will map China’s economic and political program under new leadership of President Xi Jinping. 

The latest security crackdown has led to the detention of nearly 60 political activists, academics and prominent bloggers, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an international advocacy group.

Keep reading on behindthewall >>

Did U.S. Hedge-Fund Billionaire Violate Cuba Sanctions?

capitolhillcubans

A Vanity Fair profile of billionaire hedge-fund manager Dan Loeb has revealed:

In March 2002 there was a strange blip in Loeb’s biography, when he traveled to Cuba with his friend Alexander von Furstenberg (son of the designer Diane von Furstenberg, a Vanity Fair contributor) for what was supposed to be a long weekend. Things unexpectedly took a dark turn, and according to a lawsuit later filed by Youlia Miteva, a former Third Point analyst who accused Loeb of breach of contract, among other things, “Cuban authorities had refused to allow him to leave.” Asked what had happened in Cuba, Loeb told me earlier this year, for a previous Vanity Fair story, that he had been involved in a car accident, stuck around for a couple more weeks, had a legal hearing, and everything turned out fine.

But, according to Chapman, a desperate and sobbing Loeb had called him from Cuba, where he was confined to his hotel after the accident. “I remember how scared Dan sounded when describing the incident involving his hitting a local Cuban kid with his car,” recalls Chapman. “I truly felt so sorry for him when he told me he had found himself unable to leave the country, curled up in a ball on the floor of his room crying, promising God that he’d do anything if the Almighty got him out of his predicament. It wasn’t as if Dan had done it on purpose, and who really knows what ended up happening to the kid?”

A question:

Under what specific travel license did Loeb spend "a long weekend" in Cuba? 

For, as we all know, tourism travel to Cuba is illegal -- and no one is above the law.

36 Millionaire Audits Turn Up $47 Million in Unpaid Taxes

MidweekPolitics

How China's Self-Made Women Billionaires Earned Their Fortunes

Chinese billionaire Zhang Xin [WEF]

Kerry A. Dolan

Just eight women rank among the 100 wealthiest people in China, according to the Forbes list of China’s 100 richest, published last week. Of those eight women, two inherited their fortunes. The other six are self-made billionaires – a pretty impressive statistic, considering that just 7 of the 45 women on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans built their own fortunes.

What’s amazing is how young, relatively speaking, most of the Chinese women billionaires are. Five out of the six are in their forties. Their youth speaks to the incredible growth of capitalism, and the growth of the economy, in recent decades in China.

Real estate has proven to be the key business for four of these six Chinese women. Wu Yajun, the wealthiest of this elite cohort, ranks number 5 on the China list with an estimated net worth of $6.2 billion. She chairs the board of Longfor Properties, which trades in Hong Kong. She owns about 75% of the company’s stock. Longfor develops a broad range of properties –including residential, office buildings, high-rise apartments and shopping malls. She joined the company in 1994 in Chongqing, where it was founded. It’s now headquartered in Beijing.

Chan Laiwa’s fortune is also tied primarily to real estate. Chan, who’s 71, ranked number 17 richest in China with a net worth estimated at $2.8 billion. She founded Fuwah Group, one of Beijing’s largest real estate developers, in 1988. It is still privately owned. Chan is reported to have purchased her first few real estate properties with profits from a furniture repair business she started in Hong Kong.  

More on Forbes >>

A Day In The Life Of Yuri Milner, Web Billionaire

DST Global founder Yuri Milner; photo by Paul Eng

Parmy Olson

You wouldn’t think Yuri Milner was in a hurry. When I first interviewed him in London last January with Forbes’ San Francisco bureau chief Eric Savitz, it was clear that the Internet investor we’ve just ranked a billionaire liked to take his time in conversation. Biting into a crustless tuna sandwich, the former physicist would methodically chew it before answering a question about the way social networks were connecting the world. “When you have a few billion people connected with screens, not voice… screens are important,” he said in a Russian accent tinged with an American lilt. Chew, chew, chew. Zen-like pause. “You can transmit a thousand times more information.”

More Here >>