Friday, June 16. A day just like any other. Another day, another donation scandal. Wheels within wheels — Just trying to keep up with this stuff is wearing me down. Note the same players on 4 Corners were guests at the wedding.
“…It is understood Mr Tian came into contact with the NSW ALP through close associate Michael Yang, a former staffer to Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews who continues to advise that state’s government on a multicultural board. Mr Yang is a Labor affiliate in Melbourne’s Chinese community. He has close links to NSW Labor senator Sam Dastyari and also to Huang Xiangmo, a property developer, big ALP donor and head of a pro-China Communist Party lobby group called the Australia Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China. Mr Yang is a vice-president of Mr Huang’s organisation. Since leaving Mr Andrews’s staff, he has founded his own pro-China lobby group in Melbourne, the Australian Hubei Chamber of Commerce. In January last year, Mr Yang and Senator Dastyari attended the wedding of Mr Huang’s daughter at the Shangri-la Hotel in Sydney. Other guests were Labor leader Bill Shorten and Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen, former Liberal minister and now trade consultant Andrew Robb, and NSW Labor upper house MP Ernest Wong…”
FULL STORY BELOW
“…One of the NSW Labor Party’s mysterious Chinese donors is a Melbourne-based businessman who was arrested in Macau last year over allegations he helped run a “high rollers” private junket operation for James Packer’s Crown gambling empire.
Donation disclosure documents show the Nine Dragons Club, a Melbourne horse breeding company run by Tian Di, donated $26,700 to the NSW ALP in September 2015.
Mr Tian has not been seen since his arrest in October during co-ordinated raids by Chinese police acting on claims that he and others were trying to lure high-stakes gamblers to Australia in contravention of Chinese law.
It is understood Mr Tian came into contact with the NSW ALP through close associate Michael Yang, a former staffer to Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews who continues to advise that state’s government on a multicultural board.
Mr Yang is a Labor affiliate in Melbourne’s Chinese community. He has close links to NSW Labor senator Sam Dastyari and also to Huang Xiangmo, a property developer, big ALP donor and head of a pro-China Communist Party lobby group called the Australia Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China.
Mr Yang is a vice-president of Mr Huang’s organisation. Since leaving Mr Andrews’s staff, he has founded his own pro-China lobby group in Melbourne, the Australian Hubei Chamber of Commerce.
The Hubei chamber’s headquarters is in the Equity Chambers building in Melbourne’s Bourke Street, which Mr Tian bought in 2013 for $15 million.
Mr Tian, who like Mr Yang was born in Hubei province, also owns a sprawling thoroughbred farm near Melbourne, which he bought as the Nine Dragons Club company in 2013 for $6m.
The company has since been renamed Jolong Park.
In an audit this week of foreign donations, after questions about Chinese funding and possible “soft power” influence, the NSW ALP’s head office found donations from the Nine Dragons Club, along with others from companies linked to a gold trader and NSW Labor Senate candidate at last year’s election, “Simon” Shou Zhou.
In January last year, Mr Yang and Senator Dastyari attended the wedding of Mr Huang’s daughter at the Shangri-la Hotel in Sydney. Other guests were Labor leader Bill Shorten and Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen, former Liberal minister and now trade consultant Andrew Robb, and NSW Labor upper house MP Ernest Wong.
After last week’s Fairfax-ABC Four Corners program on Chinese donations, Mr Shorten said Labor did not want any connection with two Chinese-born ALP donors allegedly cited by ASIO to the Turnbull government because of Beijing affiliations. One of the men was Mr Huang. The other was Chau Chak Wing, a property developer and Australian citizen…” Labor Donor Arrested In Macau