Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader
總理家人隱秘的財富
報道 2012年10月26日
上海——中國總理溫家寶的母親曾是華北的一名教師，他的父親在毛澤東時代的政治運動中曾被送去養豬。在去年的一次演講中，溫家寶總理說，他的童年被打上了“窮苦、動蕩和饑荒”的印記。
然而，公司與監管記錄顯示，現年90歲的總理母親楊誌雲不僅不再貧窮，而且絕對富裕。記錄顯示，僅她名下一項對中國一家大型金融企業的投資就曾在5年前價值1.2億美元（約合7.6億元人民幣）。
沒人知曉丈夫已經去世的楊誌雲是如何積累這筆財富的。但這一過程發生在她兒子被提拔進中國的統治精英階層之後。溫家寶先在1998年升任國務院副總理，並在五年後出任總理。
《紐約時報》的調查顯示，溫家寶擔任領導職務期間，他的很多親屬變得極為富有。其中包括溫家寶的兒子、女兒、弟弟及妻弟。對公司與監管記錄的調查顯示，在總理的親屬中，有些人的生意風格十分強勢，他們掌控了價值不低於27億美元（約合170億元人民幣）的資產。
很多情況下，這些親屬的名字都掩藏在多層涉及朋友、同事、商業夥伴與遠親的合夥企業和投資載體背後。此番財務解析細致而不同尋常地揭示出，在經濟高速發展、政府影響和私人財富重疊交錯的中國，擁有政治人脈的人物是如何利用自己溝通政商的能力謀取利益。
資 料顯示，與大多數中國的新企業不同，這個家族的生意不時從國有企業獲得金融支持，其中包括中國最大的電信運營商，中國移動和中國電信。其他時候，這些企業 得到了一些亞洲最富有的商業巨頭的支持。《紐約時報》發現，溫家寶的親屬在銀行、珠寶公司、度假村、基礎設施項目和電信公司中持有股份，其中部分股權是通 過離岸機構持有的。
他們持股的對象包括位於北京的一處別墅開發項目、中國北方的一家輪胎工廠、一家曾參與修建包括標誌建築“鳥巢”(Bird’s Nest)在內的一些北京奧運場館的公司，以及平安保險，世界上最大的金融服務公司之一。
今年70歲的溫家寶，作為一個仍然嚴重依靠政府帶動的經濟體的總理， 在為其親屬帶來巨大財富的主要行業中擁有廣泛的權力。比如，中國公司如果不經過他手下的機構審批，就不能在證券交易所上市。他在決定是否批準能源與電信等戰略行業中的大型投資項目方麵，也起著關鍵作用。
由於中國政府甚少公開自己的決策過程，所以還不清楚溫家寶在大多數政策或法規決策中是否施加了影響，或施加了什麽影響。但在一些情況下，他的親屬卻試圖從這些決策帶來的機會中獲利。
例 如，根據基於政府記錄進行的估算，他弟弟的公司曾從政府那裏得到了價值超過3千萬美元（約合1.89億元人民幣）的合同與補貼，負責處理一些中國大城市的 汙水和醫療垃圾。這些合同都是在2003年非典型肺炎(SARS)疫情之後溫家寶下令對醫療垃圾處理加強監管之後宣布的。
2004 年，溫家寶領導下的國務院免除了平安保險等公司所受經營範圍上的限製之後，該公司在其首次公開發行股票中募資18億美元（約合113億元人民幣），其當下 的市值超過了600億美元。而由溫家寶的親屬和他們的朋友、同事控製的合夥人公司在公開發行之前對平安保險公司進行了投資，並從中獲取巨額利潤。
2007年，也就是對相關持股進行公開披露的最後一年，《紐約時報》一份經過外部審計人員核實的調查報告顯示，這些合夥人公司持有股票的總價值在當時高達22億美元（約合139億元人民幣）。
中國平安保險在一份聲明中表示，該公司不知曉股東背後投資實體的背景。聲明還說，中國平安保險無法獲悉股東買賣股份背後的動機。
盡 管中國共產黨的條例要求高級官員公開自己和直係親屬的財產，但卻沒有法律法規對哪怕是最高層官員的親屬做出禁令，禁止他們成為交易撮合者或者主要投資人， 而這一漏洞實際上讓一些人可以打著家族的名號做生意。一些中國人認為，允許共產黨領導人的家人從中國長期的經濟繁榮中獲利，對確保精英階層支持市場化改革 十分重要。
但是，提交給中國監管機構的資料顯示，溫家寶親屬的商業交易有時被掩蓋了起來。其運作方式暗示，他們急切地想回避公眾的關注。調查發現，他們擁有的股權通常掩蓋在錯綜複雜的股權網絡當中，其所有權可能距實際運營的公司有五層控股公司之遙。
在 溫家寶母親的案例中，《紐約時報》通過調查公開記錄和政府頒發的身份證，並對三家中國投資公司的所有權進行追蹤之後，估算出她在平安保險持有的股份在 2007年價值1.2億美元（約合7.6億元人民幣）。他母親在平安持有的股票被登記在一家名為泰鴻(Taihong)的控股公司名下，該公司注冊地是總 理的故鄉天津。
這 些看上去是在掩飾自身財富的努力顯示，圍繞著中國精英統治階層的政治氛圍相當緊張，很多人坐擁巨富，卻不願引人注目。6月份，彭博資訊社 (Bloomberg News)報道，中國下屆國家主席的既定人選、副主席習近平的親屬積累了數億美元的財產，中國政府隨即在國內屏蔽了彭博社的網站。
“高層領導中，沒有哪家沒有這樣的問題，”與溫家寶相識20多年的一位前同事在不具名的條件下表示，“他的政敵正在有意泄露這些消息給他抹黑。”
《紐約時報》將調查發現交給了中國政府，並請求置評。中國外交部拒絕回答有關這些投資和涉及總理及其親屬的問題。溫家寶的親屬也拒絕置評或沒有回複置評請求。
女富商段偉紅的泰鴻公司就是總理母親與其他親屬持有的平安股份的投資平台。段偉紅說，這些投資實際上都是她自己的。段偉紅是總理的同鄉，也是總理夫人的好朋友。她表示，這些股份之所以放在總理親屬的名下，是為了隱藏她自己持股的規模。
她表示，“我在投資平安的時候，不希望被媒體關注，”段女士表示，“所以我讓親戚找了一些人代我持有這些股份。”
她說，自己的公司選了這些親屬作為名義股東，隻是一個“巧合”。股權登記過程需要股東提供自己的身份證號碼與簽名。直到《紐約時報》向她展示了這些投資者的姓名，她一直表示，她不知道這些人和溫家寶有親戚關係。
此次調查的公司與監管記錄的時間跨度為1992年到2012年，調查中沒有發現溫家寶名下有任何財產。從這些材料中無法看出，溫家寶是否曾對任何可能會給親屬的財產帶來影響的決定進行回避，也不能斷定這些親屬是否在投資上得到過優待。
在任期內的很長時間裏，溫家寶一直被關於其親屬試圖利用其職位謀利的謠言和猜測纏身。但截止到《紐約時報》此次調查為止，並沒有出現任何關於這個家族財富的詳細報道。
他的妻子張蓓莉是中國珠寶與寶石領域的權威人士之一，自己本身就是一位成功的女商人。《紐約時報》發現，她通過管理後來被私有化的國有鑽石公司，幫助親屬戚將一些少數股權擴充為價值十億美元級別的投資組合，涵蓋保險、科技和房地產行業。
溫 家寶夫婦唯一的兒子曾將自己開創的一家科技公司以1千萬美元（約合6千3百萬元人民幣）的價格賣給香港首富李嘉誠(Li Ka-shing)家族，並利用另一個投資平台成立了新天域資本公司(New Horizon Capital)。相關記錄與對銀行業人士的采訪顯示，目前，該公司是中國最大的私募股權公司之一， 其投資合夥人包括了新加坡政府。
記錄顯示，總理的弟弟溫家宏(Wen Jiahong)掌控著2億美元（約合12.6億元人民幣）的資產，其中包括汙水處理廠與回收企業。
作為總理，溫家寶闡明了自己是一個平民主義者和改革派的立場。他平易近人，經常接觸普通百姓，尤其是在發生自然災害的危急時刻。官方媒體將他愛稱為“人民的總理”和“溫爺爺”。
盡管還不清楚溫家寶對自己家族的財富知道多少，但在維基解密(WikiLeaks)2010年公布的美國國務院(State Department)外交電文中，有一份電文顯示，溫家寶對其親屬的商業交易有所了解，且相當不滿。
根據這份2007年發送的電報，一名在中國出生並供職於上海一家美國公司的高管告訴美國外交官，“溫家寶對家人的活動很反感，但他無力或不願限製他們。”
中國的鑽石女王
在中國的精英圈子裏，總理夫人張蓓莉很有錢而且在一定程度上控製著中國的珠寶貿易，這一點不是秘密。但《紐約時報》在查閱了公司和監管記錄之後發現，隻是在她丈夫步入中國的最高領導層後，她那些利潤豐厚的鑽石生意才變得異常成功。
張 蓓莉是一名專門研究寶石的地質學家，普通中國人基本上不知道她。她很少和總理一起出行或公開露麵。目前幾乎沒有幾張這對夫婦在一起的正式照片。盡管曾和她 共事的人說，她喜歡翡翠和精美的鑽石，但他們也表示，和其他高級領導人的親屬很像，她的著裝通常都很低調，並沒有表現得魅力四射，而是寧願在幕後施展影 響。
維 基解密公布的美國國務院文件還表明，溫家寶曾因張蓓莉在鑽石貿易中利用了兩人之間的關係而考慮過離婚。台灣的電視台2007年報道稱，張蓓莉在北京的一個 貿易展上購得了一對價值約為27.5萬美元（當時約合200萬元人民幣）的翡翠耳環。但根據當時的新聞報道，透露此消息的那名台灣展商後來否認了該說法， 中國官方新聞審查部門迅速封鎖了國內對該事件的報道。
一位曾和溫家寶的親屬合作過銀行業人士稱，“在領導層的圈子裏，她的商業活動是眾所周知的。”這位銀行業人士還表示，張蓓莉的辦公室致電商業人士也不是什麽不尋常的事，“如果你接到了電話，怎麽能說不呢？”
張蓓莉最初得勢是在上世紀90年代，當時她還是地質部的一名監管人員。那時，中國的珠寶市場尚處於起步階段。
當她丈夫在中國的最高領導機構所在地中南海任職時，張蓓莉正在製定珠寶與寶石貿易的行業標準。她協助在北京成立了國家珠寶玉石質量監督檢驗中心，在上海成立了上海鑽石交易所。這是該行業內權力最大的兩家機構。
在中國，政府長期以來控製著市場，珠寶行業監管部門常常決定著哪家公司可以開設鑽石加工廠，誰可以獲準進入珠寶零售市場。國家監管部門甚至還製定了規則，要求鑽石出售方要為在中國售出的鑽石購買鑒定證書，而那些認證書就來自北京那家由張蓓莉管理的國營檢驗中心。
因此，當卡地亞(Cartier)和戴比爾斯(DeBeers)的主管來到中國，並希望能在這裏銷售鑽石和珠寶時，他們經常拜訪人稱中國“鑽石皇後”的張蓓莉。
總部設在瑞士的世界珠寶聯合會(World Jewelry Confederation)的主席加埃塔諾·卡瓦列裏(Gaetano Cavalieri)已經認識張蓓莉很多年了，他表示：“在中國，她是最重要的人。她就是中外合夥人之間的橋梁 。”
曾和張蓓莉共過事的人說，她早在1992年就開始遊走在官員和女商人這兩個角色之間了。作為國有的中國地礦寶石總公司負責人，她開始用國有資金投資新興企業。在1998年她丈夫被任命為副總理時，她正忙著和親戚朋友一起開辦企業。
根據公開披露的信息，她經營的那家國有企業投資了數家下屬鑽石企業。在這些公司當中，有好幾家是由張蓓莉的親戚或她在國家珠寶玉石檢驗中心的前同事經營的私有企業。
比 如，1993年，張蓓莉負責的那家國企幫助成立了北京戴夢得寶石公司，這是一家大型的珠寶生產商。股東名冊顯示，一年後，她的一個弟弟張劍鳴和她的兩名在 政府的同事以個人的名義購得了該公司80%的股份。北京戴夢得投資的深圳戴夢得寶石公司則是由她丈夫的弟弟溫家宏所控製。
中寶戴夢得是她最大的成功之一。這家企業的出資方包括由她擔任一把手的國有企業中國地礦寶石總公司。中寶戴夢得和另外一家由她弟弟張劍鶤管理的國企有生意往來。張劍鶤曾是浙江嘉興的一名官員，那裏也是張蓓莉的家鄉。
1999年夏，在達成了從俄羅斯和南非進口鑽石的協議後，中寶戴夢得在上海證券交易所(Shanghai Stock Exchange)上市，募集到了3.25億元人民幣。根據公司文件，這次募股為張蓓莉的家人帶來了大約800萬美元（當時約合6600萬元人民幣）。
盡管她從未被列為股東，但她以前的同事和生意夥伴表示， 張蓓莉早年成立的鑽石合夥企業最終成為了一係列企業的核心，她幫助自己的家族和同事獲得了那些企業的股份。
《紐約時報》沒有發現，溫家寶曾利用自己的政治影響力對親屬所投資的鑽石公司進行關照。然而，之前的生意夥伴表示，溫家寶家族在鑽石行業和其他領域的成功往往都得到了富有商人的資金扶持，那些商人試圖借此討好總理一家。
“溫 家寶成為總理後，他妻子出售了部分鑽石相關的投資，轉而進入新的領域，” 一名同該家族有過生意往來的中國高管說。 因為怕遭政府報複，這位高管請求匿名。公司記錄顯示，從上世紀90年代末開始，一群富商輪番買進這些鑽石公司的大量股份。出售方通常是溫家寶的親戚，然 後，在這些商人的幫助下，他們將所得再投資到房地產和金融等有利可圖的項目中。
根據公司記錄，富商通常會向由這些親戚部分控製的投資合夥公司提供會計人員和辦公地點。
“當他們合夥成立公司時，”一位和溫家成員一起成立過公司的商人說，“張蓓莉留在幕後。這就是他們的模式。”
唯一的兒子
今年早些時候的一個晚上，總理的獨子溫雲鬆坐在一個名為“秀”的雪茄吧裏，這是一間位於北京柏悅酒店的頂級酒吧。在場的兩位客人透露，他當時正喝著雞尾酒，身邊圍繞著北京的新貴們。這些人提著名牌包，身著昂貴的西裝。
在中國，人們普遍認為高層領導人的下一代構成了一個特殊的階層，人稱“太子黨”。這些人往往持有常青藤(Ivy League)名校的文憑，享受貴賓待遇，甚至能在熱門股票發行時以優惠價格獲得股票。
在市場準入受到政府嚴格控製的中國，人們都認為太子黨好辦事。而近幾年，還沒有幾個太子黨像年屆不惑的溫雲鬆這樣有魄力。他的英文名是溫斯頓(Winston)。
經過調查溫雲鬆的各種投資，並采訪了與他相識多年的人士，《紐約時報》發現他涉足的交易領域極其廣泛，獲利甚豐，這即使是在他太子黨同輩中也是出類拔萃的。
諸如中國移動、中國電信、中央電視台這樣的國有大機構都和他合作成立了新公司。在近些年，溫雲鬆還和好萊塢(Hollywood)製片商就融資活動展開洽談。
苦惱於中國尚無精英級別的寄宿學校，溫雲鬆最近雇傭了康涅狄格州的喬特羅斯瑪麗中學(Choate)和霍奇科斯學校(Hotchkiss)的校長來負責成立一所位於京郊、投資1.5億美元的私立學校，這所學校目前正在建設中。
另 外，根據公司記錄及熟悉其家庭投資情況的人士的陳述，溫雲鬆與其妻還擁有珠寶公司、網絡公司和動畫公司的股份，他們甚至通過非直接的方式，擁有政府鼎力支 持的在線支付企業聯動優勢科技有限公司(Union Mobile Pay)的股份。一直以來，他們和自己的兩個孩子住在位於北京市中心的總理官邸內。
一位與溫雲鬆經常見麵的風險投資家說：“他不會對用自己的影響來辦事感到不好意思。”
溫雲鬆拒絕接受采訪，但他的妻子楊小萌在一次電話采訪中表示，針對自己丈夫的商業活動的批評並不公平。
“所有關於他的報道都是錯誤的，”她表示，“他真的已經不怎麽做生意了。”
溫 雲鬆畢業於北京的精英學校，並在北京理工大學(Beijing Institute of Technology)取得工科學位。他後來出國，在加拿大溫莎大學(University of Windsor)取得了材料科學的碩士學位，並在美國伊利諾伊州埃文斯頓的西北大學(Northwestern University)凱洛格商學院(Kellogg School of Business)取得了工商管理碩士學位。
熟悉溫雲鬆生意的人透露，他2000年回國後，在五年時間裏和別人一起成功打造了三家科技公司。隨後他將其中兩家公司出售給了香港的企業家，其中包括亞洲首富李嘉誠(Li Ka-shing)的家族。
經 查閱香港與北京的公司注冊信息發現，溫雲鬆在2000年成立了他的第一家公司優創科技(Unihub Global)，提供互聯網數據服務，啟動資金為500萬美元。資金來源於一些關係密切的親戚與他母親以前在政府和鑽石行業的同事，以及香港第二富有家族 的家長鄭裕彤(Cheng Yu-Tung)身邊的一個人。這家公司的最早客戶是一些國有證券公司和平安保險。總理的親屬持有大量平安保險股份。
2005 年，他進行了更大膽的嚐試，開始進軍私募股權行業，和一群西北大學的中國同學成立了新天域資本公司。公司很快從各方投資者募集了1億美元的資金。投資人中 有日本軟銀集團(Softbank)旗下的思佰益控股(SBI Holdings)和新加坡政府的投資基金淡馬錫(Temasek)。
在溫雲鬆的領導下，新天域迅速躥升為私人股本行業的佼佼者，公司在生物科技、太陽能、風能和建築設備製造領域投資。據思佰益控股，迄今為止，該公司已經向投資者返還了4.3億美元，相當於逾四倍的獲利。
香港行業出版物《亞洲私募股權評論》(Asia Private Equity Review)的主編凱瑟琳·吳(Kathleen Ng)說：“他們的第一個基金就一炮打響。這使得他們可以募得更多資金。”
目前，新天域管理著逾25億美元的資金 。
然而，溫雲鬆的一些交易卻給總理帶來了一些不必要的關注。
2010年，就在一家名為四環醫藥的企業公開發行股票僅兩個月前，新天域收購了該公司9%的股權。香港證交所做出裁定，這筆後期投資違反了相關規定，並強迫新天域退回股權。即便這樣，該公司還是在這筆交易中獲利4650萬美元。
不久以後，新天域宣布，溫雲鬆已經不再負責公司的日常運作。他轉而加入了國有的中國衛星通信集團公司。這家公司和中國的空間項目有聯係，目前，他已經成為了該公司的董事長。
富豪們
在上世紀90年代末期，段偉紅通過自己的泰鴻地產公司在總理的家鄉天津管理著一幢辦公樓與幾處房產。她當時還不到30歲，擁有南京理工大學的學位。
在2002年，段偉紅與幾位溫家寶的親戚展開了商業合作，將自己的房地產公司轉換成為了同名的投資公司。這家公司最終使段偉紅變得非常富有。
現 年43歲的段偉紅與總理的關係尚不明朗。在數次采訪中，她先是表示，自己並不認識溫家任何人，但隨後又承認自己是總理夫人張蓓莉的朋友。與其他幾位中國企 業家一樣，在和這些親屬以及他們的關係網中的朋友與同事展開合作後，她的財富規模急速上升。然而她表示，自己和這些人在平安股權上的關係隻存在於紙麵上， 並沒有真正的金錢往來。
段偉紅與另外幾個商人一直以來都在幫助溫家寶家族，他們的作用至關重要，在關鍵時刻啟動大型項目，以幫助溫家寶家族成員設立投資平台，並從中獲利。這些生意夥伴裏包括6位來自中國各地的億萬富豪。
成立於天津的泰鴻獲得了驚人的回報。公司披露信息與段偉紅的研究生論文顯示，2002年，在平安保險首次公開發行股票之前，泰鴻以6500萬美元購得了平安3%的股份。5年後，這些股票的市值為37億美元。
隨後，通過自己在香港的一家公司，段偉紅和兩家國有企業成立了一個合資公司，並在北京首都國際機場附近購得了一大塊土地。如今，在這片土地上，坐落著一個不斷壯大的貨運物流中心。去年，泰鴻將這一項目中該公司擁有的53%股權出售給了一家新加坡企業，售價為近4億美元。
《紐約時報》通過查閱公司披露材料發現，這筆交易，連同她對豪華酒店、北京的別墅開發項目，以及在香港上市的北京金隅股份有限公司的投資，對段偉紅的財富積累起到了至關重要的作用。北京金隅是中國最大建築材料企業之一。
通過查閱報表還發現，在過去10年中，泰鴻有著三十多位個人股東，其中很多人要麽是溫家寶的親屬，要麽是張蓓莉的前同事。
其他與總理的親屬合作過的富商拒絕就本報道置評。段偉紅強烈否認自己與總理或其親屬存在任何金錢往來，並表示，將平安股票放在他人名下，隻為避免媒體關注。“投資平安的錢全是我自己的” ，曾經是平安監事會成員的段偉紅表示。“我做的一切都是合法的。”
與溫家寶的親屬進行合作的另一位富商是掌握著香港集團企業新世界發展公司的鄭裕彤(Cheng Yutung)。《福布斯》(Forbes)數據顯示，他的身價為150億美元，是亞洲最大的富豪之一。
在20世紀90年代，新世界正在中國內地為一家專門經營高檔珠寶的姊妹公司尋找落腳點。1998年，這家名為周大福(Chow Tai Fook)的連鎖珠寶零售企業在中國內地開設了第一家門店。
相 關記錄與對當事人的采訪顯示，鄭裕彤的手下向背後有溫家寶的親屬支持的鑽石企業進行了投資。還與這些企業一起，共同投資了一係列企業實體，其中包括生命人 壽 (Sino-Life)、國民信托(National Trust)和平安保險。企業披露的報表顯示，鄭裕彤作出的這些投資現在至少價值50億美元。連鎖珠寶企業周大福也得到了蓬勃發展。今天，該公司42億美 元的年收入中，60%來自中國市場。
本報未能聯係到87歲的鄭裕彤。新世界發展公司也沒有回複打過去的電話。
對溫家寶的影響
2007年冬，就在溫家寶開始第二個總理任期之前，他呼籲采取新措施打擊腐敗，尤其是高級官員的腐敗。
“各級主要負責同誌要……帶頭執行中央關於黨政幹部廉潔自律的各項規定。”在北京舉行的一次黨內高層官員參加的會議上，溫家寶說：“領導幹部特別是高級幹部要嚴格管束子女、親屬和身邊工作人員，防止他們利用自己的影響謀取不正當利益。”
上述講話，與溫家寶較早前推動對公務員實行更嚴格的財產申報規定，要求高級官員公布家庭資產的行動是一致的。
由於中國共產黨並不公布此類信息，並不清楚溫家寶是否進行過關於自己家庭財產的申報。盡管如此，《紐約時報》發現的溫家寶親屬持有的資產中，很多可能並不需要進行披露，因為那些資產並不是以溫家寶，及他的妻子和子女的名義持有的。
《紐 約時報》通過調查發現並經由外部審計人員核查的27億美元資產中，約有80%是由溫家寶的母親、弟弟、弟媳、溫家寶妻子的兩名兄弟、溫家寶的兒媳及親家等 人所持有的。他們都不受中國共產黨公開財產的規定所限製。《紐約時報》對相關親屬的中國平安保險持股總規模進行了計算，其結果得到了審計師的確認。總額包 括親屬曾經持有但在2004年至2006之間售出的股票，以及2007年末剩下的股票。在此之後，他們平安保險的持股狀況就沒有再進行過公開披露。
法律專家表示，估測準確的價值並不容易，因為可能存在一些並不對外披露、指定真正受益者的附加協議。
哥 倫比亞大學法學院(Columbia University Law School)教授克提斯·米爾哈特(Curtis Milhaupt)曾研究過中國公司架構，他表示：“複雜的企業架構並不一定有陰謀詭計。但在企業所有權和政治權力緊密交織的中國體製之下，殼公司就會放 大資產所有人不明、資金來源不明的問題。”
在溫家寶的家族所控製的企業中進行投資的人裏，有很多長期的商業夥伴、前同事，以及大學同學，其中包括溫雲鬆在西北大學的同學於劍鳴，以及溫家寶的弟弟溫家宏長期以來的同事張玉宏。這些人都沒有回複就本報道置評的請求。
披露溫家寶家族持有的財富，可能會給溫家寶帶來政治上的打擊。
下個月，中共十八大將在北京召開，共產黨將宣布下一屆領導人人選。但是這個篩選過程卻已經陷入幾十年來最嚴重的政治醜聞中——試圖進入最高層的重慶市委書記薄熙來倒台。
在北京，因已到退休年齡，溫家寶即將卸任總理一職。數位政治分析人士表示，即使在離任之後，作為黨內老領導，他還將在幕後保有強大的政治力量，但這些顯示其親屬曾在他任期內積累巨額財富的材料，幾乎肯定會削弱他在黨內的地位。
“這將影響他手中剩下的政治力量，” 研究中國領導層的專家、加州克萊蒙麥肯納學院(Claremont McKenna College)的政府學教授裴敏欣(Minxin Pei)表示。
溫家寶的支持者表示，他本人並沒有從家族的商業往來中獲利，甚至可能也不太了解這些商業往來的規模。
今年3月，溫家寶暗示，他至少是知曉自己的親屬引發了不少傳言。在北京舉行的一場向全國電視直播的新聞發布會上，溫家寶堅稱，自己擔任公職期間“沒有謀過私利”。
“我敢於麵對人民、麵對曆史。”溫家寶動情地說：“知我罪我，其惟春秋。”
October 25, 2012
Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader
By DAVID BARBOZA
BEIJING — The mother of China’s prime minister was a schoolteacher in northern China. His father was ordered to tend pigs in one of Mao’s political campaigns. And during childhood, “my family was extremely poor,” the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said in a speech last year.
But now 90, the prime minister’s mother, Yang Zhiyun, not only left poverty behind — she became outright rich, at least on paper, according to corporate and regulatory records. Just one investment in her name, in a large Chinese financial services company, had a value of $120 million five years ago, the records show.
The details of how Ms. Yang, a widow, accumulated such wealth are not known, or even if she was aware of the holdings in her name. But it happened after her son was elevated to China’s ruling elite, first in 1998 as vice prime minister and then five years later as prime minister.
Many relatives of Wen Jiabao, including his son, daughter, younger brother and brother-in-law, have become extraordinarily wealthy during his leadership, an investigation by The New York Times shows. A review of corporate and regulatory records indicates that the prime minister’s relatives, some of whom have a knack for aggressive deal-making, including his wife, have controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.
In many cases, the names of the relatives have been hidden behind layers of partnerships and investment vehicles involving friends, work colleagues and business partners. Untangling their financial holdings provides an unusually detailed look at how politically connected people have profited from being at the intersection of government and business as state influence and private wealth converge in China’s fast-growing economy.
Unlike most new businesses in China, the family’s ventures sometimes received financial backing from state-owned companies, including China Mobile, one of the country’s biggest phone operators, the documents show. At other times, the ventures won support from some of Asia’s richest tycoons. The Times found that Mr. Wen’s relatives accumulated shares in banks, jewelers, tourist resorts, telecommunications companies and infrastructure projects, sometimes by using offshore entities.
The holdings include a villa development project in Beijing; a tire factory in northern China; a company that helped build some of Beijing’s Olympic stadiums, including the well-known “Bird’s Nest”; and Ping An Insurance, one of the world’s biggest financial services companies.
As prime minister in an economy that remains heavily state-driven, Mr. Wen, who is best known for his simple ways and common touch, more importantly has broad authority over the major industries where his relatives have made their fortunes. Chinese companies cannot list their shares on a stock exchange without approval from agencies overseen by Mr. Wen, for example. He also has the power to influence investments in strategic sectors like energy and telecommunications.
Because the Chinese government rarely makes its deliberations public, it is not known what role — if any — Mr. Wen, who is 70, has played in most policy or regulatory decisions. But in some cases, his relatives have sought to profit from opportunities made possible by those decisions.
The prime minister’s younger brother, for example, has a company that was awarded more than $30 million in government contracts and subsidies to handle wastewater treatment and medical waste disposal for some of China’s biggest cities, according to estimates based on government records. The contracts were announced after Mr. Wen ordered tougher regulations on medical waste disposal in 2003 after the SARS outbreak.
In 2004, after the State Council, a government body Mr. Wen presides over, exempted Ping An Insurance and other companies from rules that limited their scope, Ping An went on to raise $1.8 billion in an initial public offering of stock. Partnerships controlled by Mr. Wen’s relatives — along with their friends and colleagues — made a fortune by investing in the company before the public offering.
In 2007, the last year the stock holdings were disclosed in public documents, those partnerships held as much as $2.2 billion worth of Ping An stock, according to an accounting of the investments by The Times that was verified by outside auditors. Ping An’s overall market value is now nearly $60 billion.
Ping An said in a statement that the company did “not know the background of the entities behind our shareholders.” The statement said, “Ping An has no means to know the intentions behind shareholders when they buy and sell our shares.”
While Communist Party regulations call for top officials to disclose their wealth and that of their immediate family members, no law or regulation prohibits relatives of even the most senior officials from becoming deal-makers or major investors — a loophole that effectively allows them to trade on their family name. Some Chinese argue that permitting the families of Communist Party leaders to profit from the country’s long economic boom has been important to ensuring elite support for market-oriented reforms.
Even so, the business dealings of Mr. Wen’s relatives have sometimes been hidden in ways that suggest the relatives are eager to avoid public scrutiny, the records filed with Chinese regulatory authorities show. Their ownership stakes are often veiled by an intricate web of holdings as many as five steps removed from the operating companies, according to the review.
In the case of Mr. Wen’s mother, The Times calculated her stake in Ping An — valued at $120 million in 2007 — by examining public records and government-issued identity cards, and by following the ownership trail to three Chinese investment entities. The name recorded on his mother’s shares was Taihong, a holding company registered in Tianjin, the prime minister’s hometown.
The apparent efforts to conceal the wealth reflect the highly charged politics surrounding the country’s ruling elite, many of whom are also enormously wealthy but reluctant to draw attention to their riches. When Bloomberg News reported in June that the extended family of Vice President Xi Jinping, set to become China’s next president, had amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, the Chinese government blocked access inside the country to the Bloomberg Web site.
“In the senior leadership, there’s no family that doesn’t have these problems,” said a former government colleague of Wen Jiabao who has known him for more than 20 years and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “His enemies are intentionally trying to smear him by letting this leak out.”
The Times presented its findings to the Chinese government for comment. The Foreign Ministry declined to respond to questions about the investments, the prime minister or his relatives. Members of Mr. Wen’s family also declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
Duan Weihong, a wealthy businesswoman whose company, Taihong, was the investment vehicle for the Ping An shares held by the prime minister’s mother and other relatives, said the investments were actually her own. Ms. Duan, who comes from the prime minister’s hometown and is a close friend of his wife, said ownership of the shares was listed in the names of Mr. Wen’s relatives in an effort to conceal the size of Ms. Duan’s own holdings.
“When I invested in Ping An I didn’t want to be written about,” Ms. Duan said, “so I had my relatives find some other people to hold these shares for me.”
But it was an “accident,” she said, that her company chose the relatives of the prime minister as the listed shareholders — a process that required registering their official ID numbers and obtaining their signatures. Until presented with the names of the investors by The Times, she said, she had no idea that they had selected the relatives of Wen Jiabao.
The review of the corporate and regulatory records, which covers 1992 to 2012, found no holdings in Mr. Wen’s name. And it was not possible to determine from the documents whether he recused himself from any decisions that might have affected his relatives’ holdings, or whether they received preferential treatment on investments.
For much of his tenure, Wen Jiabao has been at the center of rumors and conjecture about efforts by his relatives to profit from his position. Yet until the review by The Times, there has been no detailed accounting of the family’s riches.
His wife, Zhang Beili, is one of the country’s leading authorities on jewelry and gemstones and is an accomplished businesswoman in her own right. By managing state diamond companies that were later privatized, The Times found, she helped her relatives parlay their minority stakes into a billion-dollar portfolio of insurance, technology and real estate ventures.
The couple’s only son sold a technology company he started to the family of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, for $10 million, and used another investment vehicle to establish New Horizon Capital, now one of China’s biggest private equity firms, with partners like the government of Singapore, according to records and interviews with bankers.
The prime minister’s younger brother, Wen Jiahong, controls $200 million in assets, including wastewater treatment plants and recycling businesses, the records show.
As prime minister, Mr. Wen has staked out a position as a populist and a reformer, someone whom the state-run media has nicknamed “the People’s Premier” and “Grandpa Wen” because of his frequent outings to meet ordinary people, especially in moments of crisis like natural disasters.
While it is unclear how much the prime minister knows about his family’s wealth, State Department documents released by the WikiLeaks organization in 2010 included a cable that suggested Mr. Wen was aware of his relatives’ business dealings and unhappy about them.
“Wen is disgusted with his family’s activities, but is either unable or unwilling to curtail them,” a Chinese-born executive working at an American company in Shanghai told American diplomats, according to the 2007 cable.
China’s ‘Diamond Queen’
It is no secret in China’s elite circles that the prime minister’s wife, Zhang Beili, is rich, and that she has helped control the nation’s jewelry and gem trade. But her lucrative diamond businesses became an off-the-charts success only as her hu*****and moved into the country’s top leadership ranks, the review of corporate and regulatory records by The Times found.
A geologist with an expertise in gemstones, Ms. Zhang is largely unknown among ordinary Chinese. She rarely travels with the prime minister or appears with him, and there are few official photographs of the couple together. And while people who have worked with her say she has a taste for jade and fine diamonds, they say she usually dresses modestly, does not exude glamour and prefers to wield influence behind the scenes, much like the relatives of other senior leaders.
The State Department documents released by WikiLeaks included a suggestion that Mr. Wen had once considered divorcing Ms. Zhang because she had exploited their relationship in her diamond trades. Taiwanese television reported in 2007 that Ms. Zhang had bought a pair of jade earrings worth about $275,000 at a Beijing trade show, though the source — a Taiwanese trader — later backed off the claim and Chinese government censors moved swiftly to block coverage of the subject in China, according to news reports at the time.
“Her business activities are known to everyone in the leadership,” said one banker who worked with relatives of Wen Jiabao. The banker said it was not unusual for her office to call upon businesspeople. “And if you get that call, how can you say no?”
Zhang Beili first gained influence in the 1990s, while working as a regulator at the Ministry of Geology. At the time, China’s jewelry market was still in its infancy.
While her hu*****and was serving in China’s main leadership compound, known as Zhongnanhai, Ms. Zhang was setting industry standards in the jewelry and gem trade. She helped create the National Gemstone Testing Center in Beijing, and the Shanghai Diamond Exchange, two of the industry’s most powerful institutions.
In a country where the state has long dominated the marketplace, jewelry regulators often decided which companies could set up diamond-processing factories, and which would gain entry to the retail jewelry market. State regulators even formulated rules that required diamond sellers to buy certificates of authenticity for any diamond sold in China, from the government-run testing center in Beijing, which Ms. Zhang managed.
As a result, when executives from Cartier or De Beers visited China with hopes of selling diamonds and jewelry here, they often went to visit Ms. Zhang, who became known as China’s “diamond queen.”
“She’s the most important person there,” said Gaetano Cavalieri, president of the World Jewelry Confederation in Switzerland. “She was bridging relations between partners — Chinese and foreign partners.”
As early as 1992, people who worked with Ms. Zhang said, she had begun to blur the line between government official and businesswoman. As head of the state-owned China Mineral and Gem Corporation, she began investing the state company’s money in start-ups. And by the time her hu*****and was named vice premier, in 1998, she was busy setting up business ventures with friends and relatives.
The state company she ran invested in a group of affiliated diamond companies, according to public records. Many of them were run by Ms. Zhang’s relatives — or colleagues who had worked with her at the National Gemstone Testing Center.
In 1993, for instance, the state company Ms. Zhang ran helped found Beijing Diamond, a big jewelry retailer. A year later, one of her younger brothers, Zhang Jianming, and two of her government colleagues personally acquired 80 percent of the company, according to shareholder registers. Beijing Diamond invested in Shenzhen Diamond, which was controlled by her brother-in-law, Wen Jiahong, the prime minister’s younger brother.
Among the successful undertakings was Sino-Diamond, a venture financed by the state-owned China Mineral and Gem Corporation, which she headed. The company had business ties with a state-owned company managed by another brother, Zhang Jiankun, who worked as an official in Jiaxing, Ms. Zhang’s hometown, in Zhejiang Province.
In the summer of 1999, after securing agreements to import diamonds from Russia and South Africa, Sino-Diamond went public, raising $50 million on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The offering netted Ms. Zhang’s family about $8 million, according to corporate filings.
Although she was never listed as a shareholder, former colleagues and business partners say Ms. Zhang’s early diamond partnerships were the nucleus of a larger portfolio of companies she would later help her family and colleagues gain a stake in.
The Times found no indication that Wen Jiabao used his political clout to influence the diamond companies his relatives invested in. But former business partners said that the family’s success in diamonds, and beyond, was often bolstered with financial backing from wealthy businessmen who sought to curry favor with the prime minister’s family.
“After Wen became prime minister, his wife sold off some of her diamond investments and moved into new things,” said a Chinese executive who did business with the family. He asked not to be named because of fear of government retaliation. Corporate records show that beginning in the late 1990s, a series of rich businessmen took turns buying up large stakes in the diamond companies, often from relatives of Mr. Wen, and then helped them reinvest in other lucrative ventures, like real estate and finance.
According to corporate records and interviews, the businessmen often supplied accountants and office space to investment partnerships partly controlled by the relatives.
“When they formed companies,” said one businessman who set up a company with members of the Wen family, “Ms. Zhang stayed in the background. That’s how it worked.”
The Only Son
Late one evening early this year, the prime minister’s only son, Wen Yunsong, was in the cigar lounge at Xiu, an upscale bar and lounge at the Park Hyatt in Beijing. He was having cocktails as Beijing’s nouveau riche gathered around, clutching designer bags and wearing expensive business suits, according to two guests who were present.
In China, the children of senior leaders are widely believed to be in a class of their own. Known as “princelings,” they often hold Ivy League degrees, get V.I.P. treatment, and are even offered preferred pricing on shares in hot stock offerings.
They are also known as people who can get things done in China’s heavily regulated marketplace, where the state controls access. And in recent years, few princelings have been as bold as the younger Mr. Wen, who goes by the English name Winston and is about 40 years old.
A Times review of Winston Wen’s investments, and interviews with people who have known him for years, show that his deal-making has been extensive and lucrative, even by the standards of his princeling peers.
State-run giants like China Mobile have formed start-ups with him. In recent years, Winston Wen has been in talks with Hollywood studios about a financing deal.
Concerned that China does not have an elite boarding school for Chinese students, he recently hired the headmasters of Choate and Hotchkiss in Connecticut to oversee the creation of a $150 million private school now being built in the Beijing suburbs.
Winston Wen and his wife, moreover, have stakes in the technology industry and an electric company, as well as an indirect stake in Union Mobile Pay, the government-backed online payment platform — all while living in the prime minister’s residence, in central Beijing, according to corporate records and people familiar with the family’s investments.
“He’s not shy about using his influence to get things done,” said one venture capitalist who regularly meets with Winston Wen.
The younger Mr. Wen declined to comment. But in a telephone interview, his wife, Yang Xiaomeng, said her hu*****and had been unfairly criticized for his business dealings.
“Everything that has been written about him has been wrong,” she said. “He’s really not doing that much business anymore.”
Winston Wen was educated in Beijing and then earned an engineering degree from the Beijing Institute of Technology. He went abroad and earned a master’s degree in engineering materials from the University of Windsor, in Canada, and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., just outside Chicago.
When he returned to China in 2000, he helped set up three successful technology companies in five years, according to people familiar with those deals. Two of them were sold to Hong Kong businessmen, one to the family of Li Ka-shing, one of the wealthiest men in Asia.
Winston Wen’s earliest venture, an Internet data services provider called Unihub Global, was founded in 2000 with $2 million in start-up capital, according to Hong Kong and Beijing corporate filings. Financing came from a tight-knit group of relatives and his mother’s former colleagues from government and the diamond trade, as well as an associate of Cheng Yu-tung, patriarch of Hong Kong’s second-wealthiest family. The firm’s earliest customers were state-owned brokerage houses and Ping An, in which the Wen family has held a large financial stake.
He made an even bolder move in 2005, by pushing into private equity when he formed New Horizon Capital with a group of Chinese-born classmates from Northwestern. The firm quickly raised $100 million from investors, including SBI Holdings, a division of the Japanese group SoftBank, and Temasek, the Singapore government investment fund.
Under Mr. Wen, New Horizon established itself as a leading private equity firm, investing in biotech, solar, wind and construction equipment makers. Since it began operations, the firm has returned about $430 million to investors, a fourfold profit, according to SBI Holdings.
“Their first fund was dynamite,” said Kathleen Ng, editor of Asia Private Equity Review, an industry publication in Hong Kong. “And that allowed them to raise a lot more money.”
Today, New Horizon has more than $2.5 billion under management.
Some of Winston Wen’s deal-making, though, has attracted unwanted attention for the prime minister.
In 2010, when New Horizon acquired a 9 percent stake in a company called Sihuan Pharmaceuticals just two months before its public offering, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange said the late-stage investment violated its rules and forced the firm to return the stake. Still, New Horizon made a $46.5 million profit on the sale.
Soon after, New Horizon announced that Winston Wen had handed over day-to-day operations and taken up a position at the China Satellite Communications Corporation, a state-owned company that has ties to the Chinese space program. He has since been named chairman.
The Tycoons
In the late 1990s, Duan Weihong was managing an office building and several other properties in Tianjin, the prime minister’s hometown in northern China, through her property company, Taihong. She was in her 20s and had studied at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology.
Around 2002, Ms. Duan went into business with several relatives of Wen Jiabao, transforming her property company into an investment vehicle of the same name. The company helped make Ms. Duan very wealthy.
It is not known whether Ms. Duan, now 43, is related to the prime minister. In a series of interviews, she first said she did not know any members of the Wen family, but later described herself as a friend of the family and particularly close to Zhang Beili, the prime minister’s wife. As happened to a handful of other Chinese entrepreneurs, Ms. Duan’s fortunes soared as she teamed up with the relatives and their network of friends and colleagues, though she described her relationship with them involving the shares in Ping An as existing on paper only and having no financial component.
Ms. Duan and other wealthy businesspeople — among them, six billionaires from across China — have been instrumental in getting multimillion-dollar ventures off the ground and, at crucial times, helping members of the Wen family set up investment vehicles to profit from them, according to investment bankers who have worked with all parties.
Established in Tianjin, Taihong had spectacular returns. In 2002, the company paid about $65 million to acquire a 3 percent stake in Ping An before its initial public offering, according to corporate records and Ms. Duan’s graduate school thesis. Five years later, those shares were worth $3.7 billion
The company’s Hong Kong affiliate, Great Ocean, also run by Ms. Duan, later formed a joint venture with the Beijing government and acquired a huge tract of land adjacent to Capital International Airport. Today, the site is home to a sprawling cargo and logistics center. Last year, Great Ocean sold its 53 percent stake in the project to a Singapore company for nearly $400 million.
That deal and several other investments, in luxury hotels, Beijing villa developments and the Hong Kong-listed BBMG, one of China’s largest building materials companies, have been instrumental to Ms. Duan’s accumulation of riches, according to The Times’s review of corporate records.
The review also showed that over the past decade there have been nearly three dozen individual shareholders of Taihong, many of whom are either relatives of Wen Jiabao or former colleagues of his wife.
The other wealthy entrepreneurs who have worked with the prime minister’s relatives declined to comment for this article. Ms. Duan strongly denied having financial ties to the prime minister or his relatives and said she was only trying to avoid publicity by listing others as owning Ping An shares. “The money I invested in Ping An was completely my own,” said Ms. Duan, who has served as a member of the Ping An board of supervisors. “Everything I did was legal.”
Another wealthy partner of the Wen relatives has been Cheng Yu-tung, who controls the Hong Kong conglomerate New World Development and is one of the richest men in Asia, worth about $15 billion, according to Forbes.
In the 1990s, New World was seeking a foothold in mainland China for a sister company that specializes in high-end retail jewelry. The retail chain, Chow Tai Fook, opened its first store in China in 1998.
Mr. Cheng and his associates invested in a diamond venture backed by the relatives of Mr. Wen and co-invested with them in an array of corporate entities, including Sino-Life, National Trust and Ping An, according to records and interviews with some of those involved. Those investments by Mr. Cheng are now worth at least $5 billion, according to the corporate filings. Chow Tai Fook, the jewelry chain, has also flourished. Today, China accounts for 60 percent of the chain’s $4.2 billion in annual revenue.
Mr. Cheng, 87, could not be reached for comment. Calls to New World Development were not returned.
Fallout for Premier
In the winter of 2007, just before he began his second term as prime minister, Wen Jiabao called for new measures to fight corruption, particularly among high-ranking officials.
“Leaders at all levels of government should take the lead in the antigraft drive,” he told a gathering of high-level party members in Beijing. “They should strictly ensure that their family members, friends and close subordinates do not abuse government influence.”
The speech was consistent with the prime minister’s earlier drive to toughen disclosure rules for public servants, and to require senior officials to reveal their family assets.
Whether Mr. Wen has made such disclosures for his own family is unclear, since the Communist Party does not release such information. Even so, many of the holdings found by The Times would not need to be disclosed under the rules since they are not held in the name of the prime minister’s immediate family — his wife, son and daughter.
Eighty percent of the $2.7 billion in assets identified in The Times’s investigation and verified by the outside auditors were held by, among others, the prime minister’s mother, his younger brother, two brothers-in-law, a sister-in-law, daughter-in-law and the parents of his son’s wife, none of whom is subject to party disclosure rules. The total value of the relatives’ stake in Ping An is based on calculations by The Times that were confirmed by the auditors. The total includes shares held by the relatives that were sold between 2004 and 2006, and the value of the remaining shares in late 2007, the last time the holdings were publicly disclosed.
Legal experts said that determining the precise value of holdings in China could be difficult because there might be undisclosed side agreements about the true beneficiaries.
“Complex corporate structures are not necessarily insidious,” said Curtis J. Milhaupt, a Columbia University Law School professor who has studied China’s corporate group structures. “But in a system like China’s, where corporate ownership and political power are closely intertwined, shell companies magnify questions about who owns what and where the money came from.”
Among the investors in the Wen family ventures are longtime business associates, former colleagues and college classmates, including Yu Jianming, who attended Northwestern with Winston Wen, and Zhang Yuhong, a longtime colleague of Wen Jiahong, the prime minister’s younger brother. The associates did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Revelations about the Wen family’s wealth could weaken him politically.
Next month, at the 18th Party Congress in Beijing, the Communist Party is expected to announce a new generation of leaders. But the selection process has already been marred by one of the worst political scandals in decades, the downfall of Bo Xilai, the Chongqing party boss, who was vying for a top position.
In Beijing, Wen Jiabao is expected to step down as prime minister because he has reached retirement age. Political analysts say that even after leaving office he could remain a strong backstage political force. But documents showing that his relatives amassed a fortune during his tenure could diminish his standing, the analysts said.
“This will affect whatever residual power Wen has,” said Minxin Pei, an expert on Chinese leadership and a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California.
The prime minister’s supporters say he has not personally benefited from his extended family’s business dealings, and may not even be knowledgeable about the extent of them.
Last March, the prime minister hinted that he was at least aware of the persistent rumors about his relatives. During a nationally televised news conference in Beijing, he insisted that he had “never pursued personal gain” in public office.
“I have the courage to face the people and to face history,” he said in an emotional session. “There are people who will appreciate what I have done, but there are also people who will criticize me. Ultimately, history will have the final say.”
