Macau (MNA) – A group of around 1,000 people – including 100 Macau residents – who invested in a failed commercial complex project in Zhongshan called the ‘Le 8 Star City’, held a press conference on Wednesday where they asked for assistance by local authorities.
According to speakers, who would only identify themselves as Victim A, Victim B and Victim C , more than RMB200 million (US$28.9 million) had been lost in total in the real estate scam, with the total number of investors reaching almost 1,000 people.
The victims stated that they had purchased three storeys of a building located in 30 Fuhua Road, in the west side of the Chinese city of Zhongshan, which involves four units of retail space costing more than RMB1 million each.
From 2016 to 2017, the victims had been negotiating for the property deed from a company known as Jiman Real Estate Co. Ltd. (滿房地有限公司).
In 2017, the victims signed a contract with Jiman to establish retail operations, with conditions being that the purchase price on the contract would be paid in 2017, and that the building should be the property of the owners before April 20, 2018.
Transfer formalities should have also been completed within 270 days after signing the contract.
While the victims had all paid up, Jiman did not fulfill its end of the bargain, and later, the victims discovered that the rights to the property did not in fact belong to Jiman, but a separate real estate company, Zhongshan Rongguang Real Estate (中山市榮光置業有限公司) , with certificate number 0041437 proving that the ownership had not belonged to Jiman.
It was also later revealed that Jiman was a shell company, with two of its affiliates, Zhongman Jiman Real Estate Investment Co. Ltd (中山市滿房地投資有限公司) and Zhongcenfang Real Estate Sales Co. Ltd (眾 晨方地銷售有限公司), being also shell companies.
The legal representatives of these shell companies had claimed they would put RMB5 million each into the project, but there was no registered companies of the same name in the industrial and commercial registry of Zhongshan.
After an in-depth investigation, the victims found out that Jiman was headed by a Hong Kong resident named Lin Jieying (林潔英).
According to the victims, Ms. Lin had claimed that she was currently involved with a legal tussle with Rongguang, claiming that the property deed had in fact belonged to her.
This lawsuit has been transferred to the Guangdong Province Higher People’s Court and involved a sum of up to RMB200 million.
However, later after the court case had finished, the victims were told by the court that Lin Jieying had refused to acknowledge that she had signed any legal documents and claimed she had nothing to do with the matter in line with the recommendations of the Zhongshan Public Security Bureau and the Public Prosecutors Office of Zhongshan.
The other owners of the involved real estate companies were found to be missing.
Tired by the long wait, the victims requested assistance from the Macau SAR Government and the Liaison Office – which was sent a letter in May – with the legal proceedings, to no avail.
Several attempts to contact the municipal offices in Zhongshan were also made but no response had been provided so far.
