According to the Zhujiang Evening News, at around 15:00 on the 20th, the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court made a first-instance ruling on China’s largest mobile phone smuggling case with a value of 7.8 billion yuan. The main culprit Huang Xiaokai and his father Huang Huaiqin, among 12 criminals involved in the case, were all sentenced.
Huang Xiaokai, the head of the "Kaiqi" smuggling group, was found guilty of smuggling ordinary goods and illegally crossing the border, and was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, deprivation of political rights for life, and confiscation of all personal property; seven main culprits including Chen Yifeng and Wang Xiaofeng were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 14 to 11 years, and fined between 500,000 and 350,000 yuan; four accomplices including Huang Xiaochun and Huang Huaiqin were sentenced to terms ranging from 8 years to 1 year and 6 months, and fined between 300,000 and 50,000 yuan.
The amount involved in the case exceeded 7.8 billion yuan.
In 2001, Huang Xiaokai started operating under the guise of the Kaiqi shop in the Shenzhen Yuanwang Digital City and Mingtong Digital City areas and nearby regions. He personally or through his father - defendant Huang Huaiqin recruited key members mainly from his hometown, forming a criminal group specializing in smuggling mobile phones from Hong Kong into Shenzhen for sale to make huge profits. This criminal group was divided into departments such as the main unit warehouse, accessory warehouse, delivery department, etc., with smuggling crime bases set up respectively in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. A batch of members of this criminal group, including defendant Wang Xiaofeng, were dispatched to Hong Kong to be responsible for disassembling the mobile phones into main units and accessories. The main units were smuggled into the country by "water guests" hiding them on their person, or handed over to professional smugglers who used methods such as "stealth unloading at isolated sections of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border." The accessories were handed over to logistics enterprises for smuggling into the country, and then aggregated in places like the Kaiqi shop at the Yuanwang Digital City and Mingtong Digital City bases in Shenzhen for sale to make a profit.
From February 2006 to July 3, 2008, this criminal group smuggled 5,261,960 units of Samsung, Nokia, and other brand mobile phones from Hong Kong into the country, valued at more than 7.84 billion yuan, evading taxes payable of more than 1.139 billion yuan.
Huang Xiaokai is the mastermind behind the scenes.
In the previous two rounds of trial, Huang Xiaokai consistently argued that he was no longer the leader of the group. Several other defendants also retracted their statements during the trial, pointing out that the "mysterious person" Chen Maolin, who has not yet been apprehended, was actually the direct manager of the Kaiqi company. Huang Xiaokai's defense lawyer also repeatedly cited evidence showing that after December 2006, Huang Xiaokai had transferred the Kaiqi company to Chen Maolin. From 2007 onwards, Huang Xiaokai's identity became one of the major mysteries of the case. At yesterday's sentencing hearing, the court determined that based on the large amount of evidence in this case, it is sufficient to confirm that defendant Huang Xiaokai was indeed the actual controller of the Kaiqi smuggling group. The presiding judge stated that Huang Xiaokai's "transfer" of the Kaiqi company in December 2006 was actually to cover up his own criminal facts.