UDNEY PARK PARK PLAYING FIELDS ISSUE MAKES HEADLINES IN THE TIMES
ARTICLE FROM THE TIMES:
After the carnage of the First World War battlefields, a small corner of southwest London was dedicated to honour those who died — but Udney Park War Memorial Playing Fields in Teddington have lain derelict for years.
There are now hopes the land could be reclaimed by local residents, thanks to the current owner’s alleged links to Chinese foreign intelligence agencies and an international organised crime cartel involved in sextortion and human trafficking.
The 13-acre fields were bought for £3.5 million in 2022 by Leisure Focus Limited, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands. The company is owned by Wu An Ming, a Chinese tycoon who also bought a £30 million mansion in Holland Park, west London.
Wu, a keen badminton player, unveiled plans to revamp the playing fields, refurbish the original pavilion and build a hall to accommodate courts for his favourite sport. The plans failed to come to fruition and Wu has been seeking a buyer for two years.
It has now emerged that Wu is alleged to also go by the name Chen Xiao’er. Chen, 43, has been put under sanctions by the US over alleged links to a multibillion-pound crime operation called the Prince Group. The UK has imposed more limited sanctions on the group that do not cover Chen.
Wu has been contacted for comment. His assistant told the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which linked the two identities, that he is challenging the sanctions.
The Prince Group, based in Cambodia, is allegedly involved in “pig butchering” romance scams — so-called because fraudsters are said to gradually “fatten up” their victims before convincing them to hand over money — as well as investment frauds, sextortion, human trafficking and forced labour.
Revenues are invested through companies in the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Chen Zhi, 37, the alleged leader of the group, who has links to Chinese intelligence, is estimated to be worth £46 billion. Among his frozen assets are a £12 million mansion in St John’s Wood, northwest London, and a £100 million office block near the Bank of England.
The US Treasury said the Prince Group has made “predatory investments” in Palau, an archipelago of hundreds of islands in the western Pacific.
Chen Xiao’er was sanctioned due to his role as director at Grand Legend International Asset Management, which is alleged to be a front for the Prince Group. It acquired a 99-year lease on Palau’s previously uninhabited Ngerbelas Island, which is being developed into a luxury resort.
The US authorities said the company was assisted by an “organised crime facilitator” known as Rose Wang, who is “the vice-president of Palau’s Overseas Chinese Federation, which may conduct unofficial diplomacy for China”.
Wu’s assistant told the OCCRP that the businessman was a “long-time acquaintance” of Chen Zhi but that their only business together was in relation to the Palau resort. “Mr Wu has had no further business co-operation, financial interests, or equity relationship with Mr Chen Zhi or the Prince Group,” they added.
Claims of links to organised crime and Chinese foreign intelligence operations have caused consternation in the genteel suburb of Teddington, on the banks of the River Thames.
A local foundation is campaigning to buy the Udney Park fields under laws requiring residents to be given an opportunity to buy assets of community value. The fields have been designated such under the Localism Act of 2011.
The Premier League football clubs Brentford and Fulham are backing residents’ attempt to buy the fields.
Munira Wilson, the local MP, is seeking to strengthen the laws that allow communities to buy such assets. The Liberal Democrat told the Commons last week: “Extending the right-to-buy power … would prevent developers from land banking in the hope of a change in legislation and prevent precious, desperately needed sites like Udney Park playing fields from lying derelict and unused when hundreds, if not thousands, of local residents, young and old, could benefit from them.
“It would focus minds and encourage the owner to sell when it gets a fair market value offer from a community group.”
The site was established as a war memorial recreation ground for orphans of Merchant Taylors’ School in 1919. Lord Beaverbrook donated them to St Mary’s Hospital’s medical school in 1938 for the “playing of amateur rugby in perpetuity”.
The fields passed to Imperial College London, which sold them for £6 million in 2015 to a property development company whose plans to build 107 flats were thwarted by residents.
The Foreign Office declined to say why it had not followed the US by including Chen Xiao’er in its sanctions order. The US Treasury was contacted for comment.