In Bangkok, the police arrested a Chinese citizen after a high-rise building collapsed in that city. It turned out that he was concealing foreign ownership in the company that was building the building. That company belongs to the opaque structure of Chinese companies that are also building the Belgrade-Budapest railway
Thai authorities have arrested Chinese an executive associated with the company responsible for building a high-rise building in Bangkok that collapsed during the March 28 earthquake, the New York Times reported. At least 47 people died in this accident, while the same number are still missing.
Chinese citizen Zhang Chuanling busted is in a hotel in Bangkok on Saturday, and the investigating authorities have requested the extension of his detention for an additional 12 days.
According to the British newspaper Independent, he is one of four people suspected by Thai authorities of using Thai nationals as fictitious shareholders to cover up Chinese control of China Railway No. 10, which is a local branch of a Chinese state-owned firm.
China Railway No. 10 is part of a joint venture with the Thai company Italian-Thai Development Plc, hired for the construction of the thirty-story building of the State Audit Office, which collapsed during an earthquake of magnitude 7,7 on the Richter scale.
The epicenter of the earthquake was in Myanmar, where more than 3.700 people died, and most of the victims were at the place where the mentioned building collapsed.
Thailand's Justice Minister, Tavi Sodsong, said investigators had found evidence that the company used three Thai nationals as intermediaries to hide the real influence of the Chinese side, violating Thailand's Foreign Business Law, which limits foreign ownership in local companies to 49 percent.
According to the Thai Commercial Register, Zhang owns exactly 49 percent of the shares in China Railway No. 10.
The Bangkok Post reports that on Tuesday, three Thai citizens were brought before the court and accused of being fictitious owners of shares in the company. They have denied the charges and remain in custody for the next 12 days pending further investigation.
Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has ordered a thorough investigation into all Thai projects involving China Railway No. 10, after this tragedy caused considerable public pressure.
Meanwhile, Thai officials said Monday that steel bars from Xin Ke Yuan Steel, whose co-owners are also Chinese nationals, had failed safety tests.
As reported by international media, the company denied these allegations, claiming that their products have passed all necessary inspections and that they believe they are being treated unfairly.
China Railway No. 10 is currently participating in about ten construction projects across Thailand, which further increases the concerns of the Thai authorities after the tragedy, the Independent concludes.
A decade of delayed promises
China Railway No. 10 belongs to the corporate structure of China Railway Engineering Corporation (CREC), which is working on the construction of the expressway Belgrade–Budapest railway from the Hungarian side.
Their involvement in this project is also the first infrastructure project that China has implemented on the soil of the European Union.
At the end of 2023, as Time wrote then, there was a delay in the implementation of the project - the Hungarian portal Telex announced that the construction of the railway was stopped because the Chinese contractors could not create a system of insurance and control of trains according to European standards.
The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, announced the official opening of the railway on July 7 this year. In a guest appearance on Pink Television, he expressed confidence that, despite numerous challenges, the works will be completed on time.
"I believe that we could open the Belgrade-Subotica railway by July 7, after everything they did to us. And then, since the Hungarians have only one section left for the high-speed railway, it would be possible to reach Budapest in about three hours," said Vučić.
However, the project was marked by a decade of delays. Back in 2014, then-minister Zorana Mihajlović announced a journey from Belgrade to Novi Sad in half an hour until the middle of 2017. Vučić, then from the position of prime minister, promised the start of work in 2015 and completion by 2018. However, work only started at the end of 2017 on the Belgrade-Stara Pazova section.
The Belgrade-Novi Sad section was put into traffic in 2022, and at that time it was reported that it had received all the necessary international certificates on safety and rail traffic management, thereby meeting the highest European standards.
On this section, the Chinese consortium CRIC&CCCC (China Railway International Co.Ltd and China Communications Construction Company Ltd) also carried out the reconstruction of the Railway Station building in Novi Sad, where a tragedy occurred when the canopy fell and killed 16 people.
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