by Ganesh Sahathevan
Berejiklian's Chinese connectionsDaryl Maguire accepted China travel
from controversial businessman
Beijing: Disgraced NSW MP Daryl Maguire accepted assisted travel to China from the same businessman who was allegedly pressured by Chinese intelligence agencies to cultivate Labor MPs Eric and Joel Fitzgibbon during an earlier all-expenses paid trip.
Mr Maguire flew to China for 11 days in August 2002 with financial assistance from ACA Capital Investments, his parliamentary disclosures show.
He had dealings with ACA Capital's sole director Humphrey Xu for the next decade, culminating in a failed bid by ACA Investments to build a $400 million international trade centre in his Liberal electorate of Wagga Wagga.
Humphrey Xu, 58, is the former boyfriend and business partner of Helen Liu. Ms Liu's personal friendship with then defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon made headlines in 2009 when Fairfax Media reported allegations that Ms Liu was suspected of having links to Chinese military intelligence.
But it was Mr Xu, a businessman with a property portfolio worth tens of millions of dollars in Sydney, who first befriended then Hunter MP Eric Fitzgibbon over a proposed wine deal and invited him, and his son Joel, then a Labor electorate officer, to visit Shandong in 1993.
Humphrey Xu, Joel Fitzgibbon, Daryl Maguire, Eric Fitzgibbon and Helen Liu.
The Fitzgibbons' trip was funded by Mr Xu and Ms Liu's company Diamond Hill International.
Fairfax Media has reported that during the trip, Mr Xu and Ms Liu were approached by Chinese intelligence figures and asked to cultivate a relationship with the Fitzgibbons.
Company records show that Mr Xu ceased to be a director of Diamond Hill International in June 1995, and exited another joint company, Wincopy, in December 1995.
The pair, who had become Australian permanent residents under a sham marriage arrangement with an Australian couple, broke up, and a bitter court dispute over control of their property empire ensued.
Wincopy made a $250,025 payment to a Chinese military intelligence front company embroiled in a political donations scandal in the US in 1996, after Xu had left.
On November 30, 2012, Mr Maguire - by now a member of government after a decade in opposition - witnessed the signing in NSW Parliament of a memorandum of understanding between Wagga Wagga council, ACA Capital Investments, and Chinese state-owned company Wuai to build a $400 million trade centre.
In June 2013, Wagga Wagga council approved the sale of land to ACA Capital, shortly after Mr Xu had visited the rural town to inspect the site in Mr Maguire's electorate. Mr Maguire was on the Wagga Wagga council taskforce to establish the international trade centre, and was reported by the local newspaper to be its "driving force".
But the deal had collapsed by October, with a council report citing community concern over "lack of transparency". A month earlier, the switch to a Liberal government in Canberra saw the immigration department reopen an investigation into Mr Xu and Ms Liu's sham marriages, drawing media attention to Mr Xu's past in Wagga Wagga.
Mr Maguire, who is resisting pressure to resign from NSW parliament after revelations to the Independent Commission Against Corruption that he sought kickbacks from a Chinese company for finding property deals, declined to comment for this story. He has resigned from the Liberal Party
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