Sensational new claims about expat's mystery death in hotel

[TainanCowboy]

Quite a story going on in China and Britain. Its turned into a real inter-continental mellow-drama.

The Daily Mail has been doing some fantastic coverage of this as its developing. This Sunday article does a good summation of things so far. But there is a lot more details about Wang, Bo, Gu, Heywood and a lot of other actors.

Good stuff.

Briton in China murder riddle 'poisoned by cyanide drops': Sensational new claims about expat's mystery death in hotel
* Neil Heywood was 'poisoned to cover up adultery and £800m wire transfers'
* Websites claim Chinese official has confessed that he prepared the poison

[the bear]

Isn't this just a great story? It's like those 1930's Shanghai drama's. High party officials, expats, lust, poison....the works.

[TainanCowboy]

Isn't this just a great story? It's like those 1930's Shanghai drama's. High party officials, expats, lust, poison....the works.

It really is.
And a few of the DM staff are doing a great job of piecing it together as it winds along.

Here's another good video and report from NTD Television:

Gu Kailai Said to Have Named Zhou Yongkang as Coup Mastermind
(excert)
Gu Kailai, the wife of an ousted Chinese politician, may have given evidence against her husband's ally in order to save herself from the death penalty.

Gu was arrested on April 10—the same day her husband Bo Xilai was sacked as Chongqing's Communist Party Secretary. Gu is likely to be convicted for the murder of British citizen and family friend Neil Heywood.

According to online news service Boxun, an anonymous source on Thursday said that Gu Kailai exposed a plot between Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai to stage a coup against upcoming leader Xi Jinping. Gu apparently named Zhou as the mastermind behind the coup, calling him the "bad egg" in the Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee.

Chinese Court Intrigues 21st Century style....now we need a eunuch or two tossed into the mix.

[tommy525]

Now why does Chinese palace intrigue have to involve eunuchs?? Oh wait, they WERE
the original "dick-less wonders" weren't they ?

edit: actually no, they had their penis, but they lost their balls. So they could help the Emporer service all his many many maidens while ensuring none got pregnant and the Emporer mistaking the sons as heirs to the throne. Pretty basic but smart Chinese palace methodology really.

I suppose if one had a pretty hip Emporer who liked collecting fair maidens, a job as a eunuch wouldnt be ALL bad eh? I mean its better then being a farmer and living outside of the palace one would imagine. Eunuchs dont seem to do a lot of work. What exactly did they do anyway? Besides be involved in palace intrigue and servicing the Emporers harem?

[Jive Turkey]

You've left out the key detail that makes this story relevant to many on Forumosa. According to what I read in the South China Morning Post the other day, Heywood was an English teacher in Dalian when he first became acquainted with Gu Kailai and Bo Xilai. The guy came from a well-off family and went to Harrow, but was really just a nobody who craved the lifestyle of a dandy. He would have continued to be a complete nobody if he had not established a relationship with Gu and Bo.

It seems that Heywood used Bo and Gu to build an image of a well-connected "consultant" type of guy who could cut through red tape to get permits issued for foreign businesses, and that they used him as a conduit for accumulating funds overseas. Lunch-time discussion with colleagues yesterday included the suggestion that Bo and Gu were squirreling their offshore riches away through a method as simple as having Heywood transfer a % of his consultancy fees, all of which were likely paid into accounts overseas in pounds or dollars, to overseas shell companies controlled by Gu; his consultancy fees were essentially bribes paid to Bo, with a cut taken by Heywood for his services. Heywood seems to have followed Bo to where ever he was posted and served as a safe guy through which they could solicit grease from foreign companies. One rumor is that what made the whole relationship turn bad was Gu demanding that Heywood move money from the PRC to overseas accounts, something he had not really done before.

The shocking thing to me is that one of the CCP's rising bigshots was using such prosaic methods of graft. I mean, a f*cking English teacher? (Note that I am an English teacher.)

[ChewDawg]

Heywood was an English teacher in Dalian when he first became acquainted with Gu Kailai and Bo Xilai. The guy came from a well-off family and went to Harrow, but was really just a nobody who craved the lifestyle of a dandy. He would have continued to be a complete nobody if he had not established a relationship with Gu and Bo.

I love this story. Well-educated international-relations grad from the UK goes to China and marries locally. Teaches English to the nouveau riche, has "sweaty pig sex" with the wife of a up-and-coming politico, and then opens a consultancy that caters to the rich and the powerful in China. Then gets poisoned with cyanide and they think the politico's wife did it. The politico falls from grace within the CCP.

English teaching, adultery, politics, and murder. If only it were a Canadian kindy teacher instead of a Brit!!

This will be made into a movie for sure.

[headhonchoII]

Very interesting, there's a lot more to the story than I have been reading so far. How did a humble English teacher in Dalian get to connect with PRC royalty Bo Xi Lai? I'm sure some of the details are falsehoods. The adultery thing is probably stretching it a bit.
Poor guy, in the end it didn't work out well for him and his family.

There are numerous creative ways to hide kickbacks in the PRC. One of the favourite methods utilised is through the use of creative industries such as advertising. You can look at a rail project and guess that somebody overpaid for railway sleepers, but how can you tell if somebody overpaid for an airport advertising billboard? One airport billboard in Beijing can cost 1 million USD per year. The money needs to stretch a long way, work it out for yourselves how it circulates forwards and back. The whole system runs on the grease of corruption, yet somehow it seems to run fairly well most of the time.

[Jive Turkey]

At first I was wondering if the story would have been better with a Canadian dope-smoker angle, but this story having taken place on the mainland rather than Taiwan, I think the whole Harrow-educated-Pom who failed to get into Oxbridge and could then only manage the dandy lifestyle in a 3rd world country thing fits much better.

As to how Heywood managed to connect with Bo and Gu, the story is that he taught their son Bo Guagua English, and helped him get into Harrow. I've also read the Bo Guagua was nearly tossed out of Oxford in his first year due to his hard-partying lifestyle.

[ChewDawg]

At first I was wondering if the story would have been better with a Canadian dope-smoker angle, but this story having taken place on the mainland rather than Taiwan, I think the whole Harrow-educated-Pom who failed to get into Oxbridge and could then only manage the dandy lifestyle in a 3rd world country thing fits much better.

As to how Heywood managed to connect with Bo and Gu, the story is that he taught their son Bo Guagua English, and helped him get into Harrow. I've also read the Bo Guagua was nearly tossed out of Oxford in his first year due to his hard-partying lifestyle.

What I'm curious about is whether he was porking Gu while writing the applications to Oxford for her son. Lots of Chinese mothers will do anything for their sons to get into the good schools! In many ways, it reminds me of the scene in Forrest Gump when Forrest's momma ensures he gets into the normal school!

[Jive Turkey]

We may never know exactly what happened since this is all mixed up with the factional politics of the CCP and the story will be distorted to suite the winners. Suffice it to say that Neil Heywood got in WAY over his head. Even if he was involved in graft, I can't see how he deserved what he got. If Gu did kill him, I hope she gets a bullet in the back of the head for taking away two children's daddy.