Chinese-owned vineyards are seized by fraud squad in France

FRENCH police have seized 10 Chinese-owned Bordeaux chateaux on suspicion of tax fraud and money laundering, a police source said yesterday.

The chateaux, worth £25million, are owned by the Haichang Group, controlled by Qu Naijie, 57, an oil billionaire and one of China’s richest men.

The group owns 24 estates in Bordeaux including Château Chenu Lafitte, which it bought for £9 million in 2011.

The largest of many Chinese investors to have bought Bordeaux wineries in the past 10 years, Haichang has invested nearly £50 million in French wine. For the past four years, France’s Major Financial Crimes Office has been investigating its purchases of chateaux between 2010 and 2013.

A police source said: “We suspect [10 chateaux] were purchased with the proceeds of tax fraud. There is also evidence of forgery.” The wineries were seized earlier this year but the news has only just been made public.

The investigation began after a report by China’s National Audit Office revealed that Haichang had been given state money to buy foreign technology but instead bought vineyards in France.

The funds are said to have passed through a complicated network of offshore companies, including one reportedly registered in the British Virgin Islands, before being brought to France.

The Chinese have overtaken Belgium and Britain as the biggest investors in French vineyards, while China has become a huge market for clarets. About 160 French wine estates are now Chinese-owned, nearly all in Bordeaux.

With more than 8,000 vineyards there, local winemakers have tended not to feel threatened by the Chinese, who have generally been welcomed as they have pushed up land prices and refurbished dilapidated properties.