What’s new: Two more senior executives from Yunnan Energy Investment Group Corp. have been placed under investigation, bringing the total number of high-ranking employees being probed to six within this month.
Yang Jian, the chairman and Communist Party secretary of a natural gas unit of Yunnan Energy Investment Co. Ltd. (002053.SZ), and Zhang Jing, the chairman and party secretary of Union Resources & Engineering HongKong Co. Ltd., are officially under investigation for “serious violation of discipline and law,” a common euphemism for graft, Yunnan province's anti-corruption watchdog said late Tuesday (link in Chinese).
Both Yunnan Energy Investment and Union Resources & Engineering are subsidiaries of state-owned Yunnan Energy Investment Group, the largest energy investment entity in Southwest China’s Yunnan.
Four other current or former high-level executives of the group were placed under investigation earlier this month. Three were all announced on Nov. 5 — the ex-chairman Duan Wenquan, Vice President Yang Wenhua, and the Assistant to the Vice President Zhang Jingcan. Around a week later, Zhou Wei, the vice-chairman of an arm of the group in Dehong Dai and Jingpo autonomous prefecture, was also put under investigation.
Background: Founded in 2012, Yunnan Energy Investment Group earned the 175th spot in the list of top 500 Chinese companies by revenue this year.
As of the end of October, the group had total assets worth 220.4 billion yuan ($34.5 billion) with a debt-to-asset ratio of 63.5%. For the 10 months through October, the group’s net profit jumped 42.4% year-on-year to 3.06 billion yuan while its revenue also increased 10.7% to 108.8 billion yuan, figures on its website show.
Contact reporter Manyun Zou (manyunzou@caixin.com) and editor Bertrand Teo (bertrandteo@caixin.com)
Get our weekly free Must-Read newsletter.
