A B.C. Securities Commission panel heard Tuesday that B.C. Liberal donor Paul Oei — who is accused of running a scam based on a Metro Vancouver recycling plant — told Chinese investors that Premier Christy Clark had promoted the plant on a trade mission to China.
In hearings so far, lawyers for the commission have alleged Oei raised money from Chinese investors for recycling plant company Cascade, but diverted $6.9 million of $13.3 million. Some went into his personal bank accounts, some went to his immigration business Canadian Manu, some was spent on charity donations and beauty pageants, and some for renting luxury cars.
On Tuesday, Chinese investor Wei Chen told the panel that Oei showed investors a number of photos and magazine articles that Oei claimed showed Clark attending the signing of an investment deal for Cascade, during a trade mission to China in late 2011.
“Everything he said was lies,” Chen said.
“(Oei) said this project received strong support from the provincial government, and he showed us a lot of photos with the lady premier,” Chen said. “He said the B.C. government would use this project to go to China to attract immigrants.”
Chen said that investors were told Oei was supposed to travel with Clark for the trade mission to China but could not for health reasons. So, according to Oei, a representative signed an investor agreement for Cascade in his place, with Clark in attendance.
Oei promised investors they could immigrate to B.C. through a government program if they invested in Cascade, the panel has heard.
B.C. Election records show that from November 2011 to November 2015, Paul Oei donated $55,787 to the B.C. Liberals. His wife Loretta Lai donated $10,565 to the party from April 2012 to August 2014. Canadian Manu Immigration and Financial Services Inc. and Organic Eco-Centre Corp., both named in the Security Commission fraud allegations, donated $1,080 to the B.C. Liberals from 2014 to 2015.
Chen said he and his wife Junping Zhang invested $1 million with Oei in August 2011. They mortgaged a Vancouver home for $1 million to fund the investment, and they signed documents that they believed transferred the money into the legal trust of Peschisolido and Co., a law firm directed by Richmond Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido.
Chen said that Oei did not tell him and his wife that the shares they were issued in a numbered company, after funds passed through the legal trust, did not give them shares in Cascade.
In the hearing, Chen was shown several letters purportedly signed by he and his wife instructing Peschisolido and Co. to transfer funds to accounts controlled by Oei. Chen said that the signatures on the documents were not his and his wife’s, and the documents were forged.
Chen said he and his wife received interest payments from Oei on their investment at first, but around the end of 2012, Oei claimed that the couple’s $1 million had disappeared.
“I asked him, because the plant wasn’t even in construction, how could the money be gone? He said that all the money was spent recklessly by the Caucasian investors,” Chen said. “There was absolutely no investment. The entire thing was a scam.”
