On June 16, according to market sources, Zhang Li, co-founder of Fuli Real Estate, agreed to be extradited from London to the United States, where he will face criminal charges of bribery.
Sources said that according to British court documents, Zhang Li "agreed to be extradited to the United States on the premise of conditional bail". He was arrested at Heathrow Airport in London last year.
U.S. law enforcement agencies allege that 70-year-old Zhang Li paid bribes and kickbacks to San Francisco officials to obtain a development permit for a mixed-use residential and commercial complex. Zhang Li is suspected of paying for hotel accommodation and giving gifts to an American official when he was on vacation in China. The total amount of bribery is estimated to be between $40000 and $70000. In August
2015, Fuli Real Estate, through its subsidiary, acquired a high-end apartment project named 555 Fulton in San Jose, California, USA, and planned to build two high-rise residential buildings. Huang Yongle, a Chinese businessman
at that time, introduced Mohammed Nuru to Zhang Li. The latter is in charge of public contracts, permits and construction projects in San Francisco. He allegedly received a large amount of bribes from developers and others.
In 2018, Mohammed Nuru was invited by Zhang Li to travel to a five-star hotel in China, paid for by Zhang Li, and accepted a bottle of red wine worth $2000. When being interrogated
in the United States, Mohammed Nuru also admitted that he had met with people related to R & F Real Estate many times and received gifts. As a reward, Nuru also helped Fuli Real Estate get the license of the development project in California quickly.
In 2021, Mohammed Nuru was investigated and punished by the US judiciary for power corruption and signed a plea agreement. If
Zhang Li is extradited to the United States, he will face criminal charges of bribery.
It is understood that Zhang Li was arrested by local police in London on November 30, 2022, and was not released until December 12, when he paid a bail of 15 million pounds to the local court. On the morning of December 13,
2022, R & F announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that the company was aware of media reports that a London court had granted bail to Zhang Li, a director of the company, in a pending case in the United States concerning Z & & L Properties Inc. The Company clarifies that it has not provided any bond for bail, that it has no interest in Z & L Properties Inc., which is owned by Zhang Li and his related parties, and that the case will not have any material adverse impact on the business and operations of the Company. According to the co-founder
of Fuli Real Estate
, Zhang Li joined the real estate industry in 1993 and founded Fuli Group in Guangzhou with Li Silian, a wealthy Hong Kong businessman, to build the company into one of the representative real estate enterprises in South China. In February 2010, Zhang Li was included in the Forbes list of the world's billionaires, ranking 556. In 2013, the New Fortune China Rich List ranked fifteenth with 22.30 billion. Founded in 1994 and headquartered in Guangzhou,
R & F Real Estate is a comprehensive group with real estate development as its main business and diversified development in the fields of hotel development, commercial operation, cultural and sports tourism, Internet production and trade, medical and health care, design and construction.
In recent years, due to the development strategy, the liquidity of Fuli Real Estate has been tense, and there has been a debt default. However, Fuli Real Estate is relatively active in debt restructuring, which is the first successful extension of domestic and foreign debt in mainland China. On November 10,
2022, Fuli Real Estate announced that the overall extension of its eight domestic corporate bonds had been approved by the bondholders'meeting on September 22. After the extension, the weighted average maturity of the eight corporate bonds was successfully extended from about four months to more than three years, with a total extension of 13.5 billion yuan. Previously, Fuli completed the overall extension of 10 US dollar bills on July 11, 2022, with a total amount of US $4.943 billion, which is one of the largest consent solicitation transactions in Asia. On the
operational side, Fuli Real Estate has not yet completely come out of the quagmire. According to the mid-2022 report of Fuli Real Estate, in the first half of this year, Fuli Real Estate recorded a net loss of 6.899 billion yuan and a property sales turnover of 15.149 billion yuan, a decrease of 58% compared with the same period last year.
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