Robbed in China: Part I

[ Video Courtesy of NTDTV ]

NEW YORK—Michael Hull, a former Chase Manhattan banker who embarked on a joint venture with a state-owned company in China, has spent the past 10 years of his life in anguish.

“I’m very tired,” said Hull, grasping a folder of documents and news clippings—evidence for his case, which has been ignored by the central authorities in China.

He is one of the voiceless with nowhere to turn, having been robbed and left with nothing. “During the last 10 years I spent all my time and energy,” he says, eyes tired and worn. A Chinese-American, the last time Hull went to China a few months back, he was stalked by secret police, illegally detained, and deported.

Just over a decade ago, when he became president of American Trade Group, the construction company had $10 million invested in it. Now, “not even $60 is left,” said Hull. Corruption in China, and a legal system powerless to control the corruption, forced him to close the company.

The process began when Hull, a New Jersey resident who grew up in Manhattan Chinatown, embarked on a joint venture in China in 1996.

Hull hoped to break into a new market, which promised growth and a seemingly endless frontier for development. After investing, “we found the Chinese enterprise [was] owned by the government. We never found their investment there; we never found their money there. Everything was false.”

Despite there not being any funds, the Chinese regime still came to own 45 percent of his company.

Four years later, he found that the more than $1 million investment was gone—transferred to the China-owned corporation. Also, all the money that was supposed to come to the company account was missing.

The man who stole the investment fund had been sent by the local government to take on the position of company general manager. After the money went missing, Hull and his company filed a report with the police department. “The police department said this is a very serious matter. We have to take care of that,” Hull said.

Two months passed, and they heard nothing, and some of Hull’s employees called the police to find out what was going on. “The police said we cannot investigate this case because the manager, Mr. Wu, is a member of the communists. So we have no right to investigate a member of the communists. We have no right, so you should go to the court,” said Hull.

After taking the case to the court, he was told to go to the police, who then told him to go to the court. Things went back and forth like this for years before they finally told Hull, “There is nothing we can do.”

“The whole case is a scandal—is a corruption scandal,” Hull said. “The whole case is protected by the local authority government officials.”