Crafar farms buyer also seeking development land

Friday 27th January 2012

Jiang Zhaobai, the Chinese businessman purchasing the Crafar farms, is also a shareholder in a company seeking to buy land for a development in New Zealand.

The Overseas Investment Office decision on the sale of the farms to a company ultimately 99 percent owned by Jiang contains a footnote noting the other application. The location of the land is blanked out and the note says no decision has been made.

The OIO says Jiang is a Chinese and Hong Kong citizen who is among the wealthiest men in China. He is a professional engineer who founded his own real estate construction company in 1988.

His Shanghai Pengxin Group has businesses in four sectors, including real estate development.

Top Harbour, which has lodged an OIO application to purchase the Hobbs Wharf development in Whangaparoa, lists Zhang Fuqiang, who is an assistant to Pengxin President Jiang Lei, as a director.

It also lists Terry Lee as a director. Lee’s Westlake Capital acts as the holding company for Pengxin’s dairy vehicle Milk New Zealand and Top Harbour, and he sits on the board of both companies.

Submitters to the OIO on the sale of the Crafar farms argues that New Zealand should not sell any more land to overseas interests, that earnings would go overseas and that letting foreign companies make mass land purchases was not in New Zealand’s interests.

(BusinessDesk)

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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