A SHENZHEN businessman who was sentenced to death suspended for two years for his involvement in China s largest case of mobile phone smuggling has appealed to the Guangdong Provincial Higher People s Court.
Huang Xiaokai was recently convicted in Zhuhai for his involvement in smuggling mobile phones, said to be worth 7.8 billion yuan (US$1.19 billion), and evading taxes of 1.1 billion yuan.
The Zhuhai Intermediate People s Court found that Huang headed a criminal ring which has smuggled mobile phones from Hong Kong and Macao since 2001 and sold them in a store owned by Huang in Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen. Gongbei Customs in Zhuhai caught 13 smugglers carrying mobile phones worth 1.78 million yuan in July 2008. An investigation showed Huang was behind the operation.
He was arrested in April 2009.
After the first trial in December last year, Huang appealed to the provincial court, questioning how the value of smuggled mobile phones was calculated.
In the letter of appeal, Huang s family said Huang was wronged because he was not the owner of the shop in Huaqiangbei. He continued to use the name of the shop after he bought it in 2004. He sold it at the end of 2006.
The shop was not registered with the city market supervision authority and the owner had fled overseas after Huang was arrested in 2009.
The Zhuhai court confirmed that Huang had sold the shop. The court said, quoting other suspects, that Huang was behind the smuggling and the shop owner was more like a manager.
Huang controlled the smuggling ring and gave orders in e-mails, the court was told.
The sum of 7.8 billion yuan was calculated according to the inventories and accounts of the Huaqiangbei shop found on the computer of another suspect, Wang Shuzhou, the court said. Wei Pingshan, Huang s wife, insisted that the accounts could not be used as evidence because they were not original copies and could easily be modified. (Han Ximin)
