Cannes Villa Is Expected to Play Role in Bribery Case Against Chinese Ex-Official
By EDWARD WONG, JONATHAN ANSFIELD and SCOTT SAYARE
Published: August 5, 2013
BEIJING — More than a decade ago, a mysterious foreign buyer looking for property in France settled on a villa along the sun-bleached Riviera. The house later became tied to a British businessman, Neil Heywood, whose death in 2011 in China set in motion a political crisis within the upper ranks of the Communist Party.
Jason Lee/Reuters
Bo Xilai
That villa in Cannes has emerged as a major aspect in a criminal case against Bo Xilai, a fallen Communist Party aristocrat, which has presented the party with one of its biggest challenges since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
Officials intend to present the villa as evidence of significant bribetaking in a coming criminal trial that is expected to signify the end of Mr. Bo’s political career, according to three people with ties to the Bo family. Mr. Bo’s downfall began when accusations emerged that his wife had murdered Mr. Heywood in 2011. The trial of Mr. Bo, who is facing three criminal charges, is expected to begin within weeks or days.
Political analysts say the trial’s probable outcome, a lengthy prison sentence for Mr. Bo, has no doubt already been determined by party leaders.
The most serious charge against Mr. Bo, 64, is that of taking bribes worth more than $3.5 million, mainly from a young billionaire, Xu Ming, who was listed by Forbes in 2005 as China’s eighth-richest person. The charge rests largely on the villa, which the Chinese authorities allege was bought by Mr. Xu and given to the Bo family, according to the three people with knowledge of the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate politics of the trial.
French documents show that people close to the Bo family have been involved with the villa since 2001. Patrick Henri Devillers, a Frenchman who knew the family when Mr. Bo was the mayor of Dalian in the 1990s, is listed in a property assessment document as a current owner of the home, and he was appointed head of a company apparently created to buy the property in 2001, according to an earlier document. That management company, Résidences Fontaine St. Georges, is registered at the villa’s address, 7 Boulevard des Pins, and Mr. Heywood, the Briton and Bo family friend, was listed in court documents as the manager of the company from 2007 to June 2011, five months before he died in China.
