Meng’s jail cell could be her husband’s home
VANCOUVER— On a quiet street on Vancouver’s west side sits a two-bedroom house on a corner lot. It’s a spacious but not ostentatious family house in the same style as countless others built over the past two decades.
The $5.6-million home on 28th Ave. could soon be a jail cell for Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of one of China’s biggest companies.
Meng’s lawyers want house arrest with the guarantee of a monitoring bracelet, rather than see her await an extradition hearing in jail.
Two multimillion-dollar Vancouver homes owned by Meng’s husband, Liu Xiaozong, played a part in establishing Meng’s ties to the city. The 46year-old executive and her children spend weeks, sometimes months, of the summer in Vancouver, her lawyers said.
But prosecutors countered that “vacations” are not enough to establish close ties.
Liu and Meng’s second home in Vancouver better matches the great wealth prosecutors have alluded to. The six-bedroom, six-bathroom home on Matthews Ave. in Vancouver’s exclusive Shaughnessy neighbourhood is worth $16.3 million, according to a tax assessment.
The neighbourhood boasts large lots, heritage mansions valued in the tens of millions and large, bright red signs protesting the provincial government’s decision to increase tax on homes worth over $3 million.
In 2017, records show the home was declared exempt from Vancouver’s empty homes tax, and an audit was opened. The city has not yet received an empty homes tax declaration for the home for 2018. The 28th Ave. house was declared occupied for 2018.