The Ministry of Justice has turned down the request of the
lawyer of Yang Rong, former board chairman of the NYSE-listed
Brilliance Auto Group, for service of relevant judicial
documents.
In August this year, a US court agreed to handle the lawsuit
filed by Yang against the provincial government of northeast
China's Liaoning
Province, the largest shareholder of the company. Yang's lawyer
subsequently submitted the request for service of judicial
documents to the ministry.
A spokesman with the Ministry of Justice said that in accordance
with international law and norms governing international relations
universally recognized, judicial bodies of any one country are not
entitled to exercise jurisdiction over any other sovereign country
and its state institutions.
In line with the first article under item 13 of the Hague
Service Convention, which stipulates that service can be denied if
the request for the service infringes upon the national sovereignty
and security of the country being requested, the ministry has
turned down the request advanced by Yang's lawyer and returned the
documents submitted by the lawyer, said the spokesman.
A high-ranking government official of Liaoning Province pointed
out recently that Yang was by no means a private entrepreneur, but
an agent entrusted by the government to manage state-owned assets
in the group.
Yang concealed his real identity as an entrusted agent of
China's state-owned assets after he went abroad and posed as a
"private businessman who was being persecuted" in China, in order
to mislead the public, the official said.
But Yang says he provided most of the money used to launch the
company. Yang has obtained US citizenship and went to live in the
United States in June 2002.
(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2003)