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)