GITIC chairman gets 14 years

Huang Yantian, former chairman of collapsed Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corp (GITIC), was jailed for 14 years by a court in Guangzhou. Huang was charged with raising RMB 1.2 billion illegally, and with negligence – he lost nearly RMB 900 million of the money. GITIC went bankrupt in 1999 with debts of US$4.7 billion. Huang was arrested in September 1998, before GITIC's collapse, but was not formally charged until December 2003. GITIC acted as the Guangdong provincial government's investment company and took loans from foreign banks, then prohibited from lending to mainland companies other than provincially and municipally backed investment bodies.