THE CONSPIRACY surrounding purged Chinese leader Bo Xilai has taken a new twist after a French architect who had business links to Mr Bo and his wife Gu Kailai was arrested by Cambodian police.
Patrick Henri Devillers worked on building projects with Mr Bo when he was mayor of Dalian and shared an office with Ms Gu in Bournemouth in southern England. He is believed to have left China in 2005 and to have been living in Cambodia for about six years.
He was arrested on June 13th; the French consulate has had daily visits with him.
The Chinese government says Ms Gu is “strongly suspected” of involvement in the death in November of British businessman Neil Heywood, who also had business ties with her and Mr Bo, who was stripped of his post as Communist Party secretary of Chongqing in southwest China in April. Neither he nor his wife have been seen since.
Cambodian authorities are now mulling over whether to extradite Mr Devillers to China. The Chinese have not said whether he is suspected of any crime or if he is merely part of the broader investigation.
The French embassy in Phnom Penh was seeking an explanation from the Cambodian government.
Cambodia’s deputy national police commissioner Sok Phal said Mr Devillers was in detention while the authorities investigated the case. “We don’t know where we will send him to, but we have an extradition treaty with China,” he said. “They asked us to arrest him, we arrested him and we can hold him for 60 days.”
China’s foreign ministry said it had “no information” on Mr Devillers.
Mr Bo was purged after his right-hand man and former police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to the US consulate in Chengdu, where he apparently told of his suspicions that Ms Gu was involved in poisoning Mr Heywood.
The scandal has caused shock waves in China and has caused the biggest political upheaval since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Hundreds of business people and officials with links to Mr Bo have been implicated in the investigation into his activities.
Ms Gu and Mr Devillers had a company that chose European architects for Chinese projects.
China has a lot of sway in Cambodia, having given millions of euro in aid and investment in the last few years. In 2009 Cambodia deported 20 members of the Uighur ethnic minority group who said they were fleeing ethnic violence in China’s far west and wanted asylum.
