Chinatown boss fined £250,000 in Hong Kong

He Jia-Jin, a former vice-president of the London Chinatown Chinese Association, was found guilty of three counts of money laundering.

The businessman, who is due back in London today, was already facing an investigation by Britain's Assets Recovery Agency whose role is to seize the assets of criminals.

The agency's investigators claim Mr He and a woman have £1.5 million worth of property and cars and £700,000 in bank accounts that have been acquired from criminal activity, including money laundering and people trafficking.

The agency has launched a civil action against Mr He and frozen a number of his bank accounts.

Mr He, who is well known in Chinatown, insists he is innocent. He has never been charged with any criminal offence in Britain.

In 2001, he was questioned by the National Crime Squad in connection with an investigation into people trafficking and held overnight, but the Crown Prosecution Service said there was not enough evidence to charge him. In 1999, he was convicted of attempted fraud in a Greek court in a case thought to be linked to people smuggling.

More recently, his name was linked to a BBC investigation into pirate DVD smuggling, which in turn had links to the Chinese "snakehead" gangs.

The documentary found Mr He owned a London property housing 18 migrants, some of whom had question marks over their immigration status.

The Hong Kong court heard how Mr He, who lives in Orpington, had transferred £91,000 from his company, Futsing Finance, of Little Newport Street, Soho, to an agent in Hong Kong.

However, an apparent mistake by the bank meant the agent received £629,000 instead.

Mr He flew to Hong Kong and arranged for the money to be transferred to different accounts, knowing it did not belong to him.

The businessman has been involved in organising and sponsoring the Chinese New Year celebrations in London with the Met and other organisations.

In a recent interview with The Guardian, he compared the action of the Assets Recovery Agency to those of the Chinese communists.

He said payments which investigators claimed were to or from criminals or traffickers were in fact transmissions of money from Chinese immigrants to their families.

He said he and his companies supported the UK Fujian community centre in London.

Mr He said: "The only thing that has gone wrong is I've been involved in helping a lot of Chinese when they are in trouble."

He added: "I am quite well-known in the Chinese community and have dealt with so many Chinese, Fujian problems.

"I help deal with a lot of illegal immigrants for the authorities."