Sunday, December 9, 2018

"Surprise, surprise, Vancouver: Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou is a mansion-owning, satellite-parenting reverse immigrant"

That's the offshore province of Vancouver to you bub.
The pics give some inkling of the property price inflation Vancouver has seen over the last couple decades.

From the South China Morning Piost:
  • Title documents on two Vancouver mansions, worth US$16.4 million, identify Meng Wanzhou’s husband as Liu Xiaozong
  • Meng’s current circumstances are remarkable, but her Canadian backstory is familiar – she is a reverse immigrant who left family members in Vancouver for years
With the arrest of Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou at the request of the United States, Vancouver has found itself at the epicentre of a ground-shaking, magnitude-nine, monster of a story.
A distillation of two superpowers’ current and future battle for primacy on the world’s economic stage, the case has roiled financial markets and provoked fury from Beijing, as the US-China trade war hangs in the balance. It is a tale of epic sweep.

And yet on another, granular, level, Vancouverites could be forgiven for thinking Meng’s backstory sounds, well, pretty ho-hum: that of a wealthy returnee immigrant and satellite parent, who abandoned Canadian permanent residency for more-lucrative opportunities back in China, while buying a couple of Westside Vancouver mansions for her family.

Meng was arrested at Vancouver’s airport as she changed planes in December 1, and is being detained in prison pending the outcome of a bail hearing and possible extradition to the United States to face fraud charges.
Sabrina Meng Wanzhou: the goldfish in the bowl that is the biggest story in the world
According to Meng’s lawyer, David J. Martin, his client and her husband – identified in the bail hearing on Friday only as “Mr Liu” – are the owners of two multimillion-dollar properties, in the tony neighbourhoods of Dunbar and Shaughnessy.

Land-title documents show that the homes, on West 28th Avenue and Matthews Avenue, are in the name of Liu Xiaozong.

Meng’s husband is enigmatically described as a “marketing developer” in the October 2009 title registration of the 28th Avenue property, a three-level home currently worth C$5.6 million (US$4.2 million), according to BC Assessment....
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Meanwhile in France you can pick up this pile for under $3 million: