(Yicai Global) Aug. 30 -- Zhu Yidong, chairman of Shanghai Fuxing Financial Holding Group, who is charged with manipulating share prices, has been frogmarched back to China after two months' on the lam abroad, state media CCTV reported yesterday.

The Shanghai-based Fuxing Group which the 36-year-old returned fugitive controlled is a large private company whose business spans commercial real estate, asset management, finance, rare earth metals, healthcare, trade, cultural media and other fields. It managed assets of more than CNY35 billion (USD5.12 billion) last year, of which trading made up over CNY30 billion, according to the company's official website.

Zhu Yidong and his sidekick Li Weiwei -- the latter styled 'North China's top trader' -- used 25 institutional accounts and 436 individual ones to leaven the share price of Northeast China-based Dalian Insulator Group which they acquired for the purpose, pushing it up over twofold from June 28, 2016 to March 1 last year, information from the China Securities Regulatory Commission shows. 

The commission has barred Li from the securities sector for life, imposed a CNY2 million (USD292,000) fine and banned Zhu for three years while levying a CNY600,000 (USD87,500) fine -- in absentia, of course. Fuxing Group and others implicated have also suffered sanctions.

Zhu disappeared without a trace in late June and was thereafter at large in several countries. Zhu, who has a strong counter-surveillance ability, "turned off his communication tools and severed his communications with the mainland" as police quested after him. 

He managed to make good his escape several times as local dragnets closed in around him, before he was finally run to ground in the fifth country to which he absconded. The police who collared him found fake passports for foreign countries, Shanghai police told CCTV in an interview.

Not content with mere stock manipulation, however, Zhu's company also illegally issued hundreds of private equity fund products on its private placement platform, with the total amount involved expected to reach CNY18 billion, the latest information shows.

 After Zhu flapped off the radar screen, these funds went into domino defaults, leaving Ping An Bank, China Everbright Bank, Bank of Shanghai, China Merchants Bank, HengFeng Bank and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and other financial institutions holding the baby as their custodians. 

Zhu,  a Shanghainese 'fu er dai,' or second-generation rich, was a preppy boy born to be bad. He chose outlawry over privilege and conventionality, apparently for the sheer fun of it.  He certainly didn't seem to need the money, as he had billions to play around with, though much of it may indeed have belonged to others, particularly toward the end. Perhaps he will plead an 'affluenza' defense to the battery of charges he now faces.  

Editor: Ben Armour