Shanghai: A Chinese billionaire who killed a blackmailer after failing in an attempt to eliminate a former partner has been executed, Chinese media said yesterday.
Yuan Baojing, who was worth 3 billion yuan (Dh1.37 billion) in 1996, paid his brother and cousin to shoot the blackmailer, who had previously helped him find a hit man. The hit man had failed to kill Yuan's business partner, whom Yuan blamed for his company's $11 million in losses in futures trading.
Yuan, his brother, Yuan Baoqi, and cousin, Yuan Baosen, were executed by lethal injection on Friday after a court in northeastern China's Liaoning Province upheld a death sentence handed down last year.
"I don't accept it. I'm going to tell!" the Beijing News said Yuan shouted before he was bustled out of the courtroom and executed shortly afterwards.
Several Chinese papers carried a picture of him.
Yuan, who founded the Beijing-based Jianhao Group and made a fortune in stock and treasury markets in the 1990s, had threatened to expose corrupt officials during the course of his trial, media said.
