Company rebuts wrongdoing

Greencool Technology Holdings chairman Gu Chujun has denied charges of insider trading and of asking a renowned Hong Kong professor to write a favourable report on his company to lift its share price.

Claiming to be a "victim" of "blackmail," Gu held a press conference yesterday in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, to "tell the truth."

The spotlight hit the scandal when Gu's former employee Sung Chun, who worked at the Hong Kong securities trading unit of Sun Hung Kai, filed a lawsuit against Gu last week in Hong Kong, as reported by the China Business News.

Sung revealed that Gu promised him HK$10 million (US$1.28 million) as payment for asking the famous scholar Lang Xianping from the Chinese University of Hong Kong to write the article, which boosted Greencool's stock price at the end of 2001.

But in a statement published on www.sina.com yesterday, Lang denied any involvement in the case, saying his report was an analysis of statistics released publicly by the listed company.

"No one asked me to write an article about Greencool, whether negative or positive," said Lang.

Sung also said that instead of paying him, Gu instructed him to sell shares of Guangdong Kelon in 2003 and transfer the proceeds - HK$10.53 million (US$1.35 million) - to his own bank account.

But last May, Gu bought an action against Sung in Canada, where a court froze Sung's assets of about HK$12 million (US$1.53 million).

"Sung's trading was unauthorized and the misappropriation was reported to the Hong Kong police in May last year," Gu said at the press conference, citing that experts had confirmed that the share sale's instructions were manufactured from pre-existing account opening forms belonging to Sun Hung Kai.

Gu said Sung registered two companies in Hong Kong through which he transferred the proceeds of the share sale to his wife's accounts in Canada.

Source: China Daily