SHANGHAI: China will next month put on trial two foreign investigators linked to drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which is facing allegations of bribery, in a closed trial shut to relatives and diplomats, people familiar with the case said.
British national Peter Humphrey and his wife Yu Yingzeng, an American citizen, will on August 7 face charges of illegally obtaining personal information, a family friend who asked not to be identified said.
Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper has reported that GSK hired Humphrey to investigate the origin of a sex tape of the former boss of its China division, which emerged just before Beijing launched a bribery probe into the British company.
In May, Chinese authorities accused Mark Reilly, shown in the tape with his girlfriend, of ordering employees to commit bribery, following a 10-month probe. Reilly is believed to be in China after returning to assist in the investigation.
Humphrey, a veteran fraud investigator and former journalist for the news agency Reuters, is the founder of Shanghai-based risk advisory firm ChinaWhys, while Yu worked as its general manager.
A court has barred their son, 19, from attending the trial which was originally planned for July 29 but changed for unknown reasons. “I’m shocked and upset, and I appeal to the authorities to let me attend. I haven’t seen my parents for a year,” Harvey Humphrey said in a statement. The pair were detained in Shanghai last July.
A spokesman for the US Embassy in Beijing, Nolan Barkhouse, confirmed an August trial and that US government representatives were barred from attending, despite a bilateral agreement allowing them to do so. Afp
