With the recent sentencing of Huang Guangyu, once China’s richest person, the former GOME Chairman’s dramatic fall from dizzying heights of fortune and power is now complete. Found guilty of bribery and insider trading, he is the most recent Chinese business executive to be sent to prison for serious economic crimes. As the country continues its shift to a hybridised capitalist economy, it still struggles to control businesses and individuals who use illegal methods in pursuit of success.

Declared to be worth an estimated USD 6.3 billion in 2007, Mr Huang is one of 30 Chinese billionaires who have been tried or investigated for white collar crimes in the past decade. Arrested in 2008 under a cloud of alleged stock market manipulations, he was found guilty of crimes which netted him upwards of RMB 309 million in profit. His sentence to 14 years in prison was diminished slightly after he admitted guilt and assisted investigators with the inquiry into his malfeasance; Mr Huang’s wife was also sent to jail for the same charges and fined RMB 200 million.

One of the first to fall under the sword of China’s corporate anti-corruption campaign was Chinese-Dutch businessman Yang Bin. After naturalising as a citizen of the Netherlands in the early 1990s, Mr Yang returned to China in 1995 to start an orchid business in Shenyang. Listed by Forbes as China’s second richest man in 2001, he was arrested the following year for tax evasion and sent to prison for 18 years and fined to the tune of RMB 2.3 million.

Another early casualty was Shanghai’s Zhou Zhengyi. A true rags-to-riches story, the Yangpu-born founder of Nongkai Development counted himself one of China’s richest people in the late 1990s. Mr Zhou was investigated for illegal land acquisition in 2003, but was instead incarcerated in 2004 for three years of share manipulation. Upon his early release he was arrested again five months later on charges of bribery, forging VAT receipts and misappropriation of funds after becoming embroiled in the Shanghai pension scandal; his complicity earned him a 16 year prison sentence.

Corporate corruption is by no means the sole domain of men – several powerful women have also seen their fortunes reversed. Tian Wenhua, the former chairwoman of Sanlu Group, one of China’s largest dairy producers, is lucky to be alive. In late 2008, it was discovered the company was adding melamine to powdered milk to boost the appearance of protein levels. This economically motivated crime lead to nearly 300,000 infants suffering kidney stones and six deaths. Barely escaping the death penalty, she was fined RMB 20 million and will spend the remainder of her life behind bars.

Twenty-eight year old Zhejiang entrepreneur and the former 68th richest person in China, Wu Ying, was not so fortunate. The founder of the Bense Holding Group, involved in property development, hotels and trading, was arrested in 2007 for defrauding investors out of RMB 384 million. The nature of the financial crime meant she received a death sentence upon being found guilty late last year.

While it may seem China suffers from rampant corporate corruption and ethical disregard, according to the Hurun Report, an annual published list of the country’s rich and powerful, the sheer size of the economy and resulting growth in wealth must be taken into consideration for accurate perception. Less than two per cent of the people found on its list over the past ten years have been convicted of any crime – what the report terms as a typical ratio for a developing country. However, one thing is certain when it comes to China’s corporate criminals – the bigger they are, the harder they fall.