Deputy’s links to Chinese exile questioned

Ryde deputy mayor Simon Zhou is battling allegations he could be doing the bidding of exiled property developer Huang Xiangmo.

Chinese property developer Huang Xiangmo is living in exile in Hong Kong after his Australian residency visa was cancelled. Picture: Renee Nowytarger

Chinese property developer Huang Xiangmo would seem to have few friends left in Australia almost 12 months since his residency visa was cancelled on ASIO advice that he was a security risk.

Exiled in Hong Kong, Mr Huang faces a $140m bill for alleged unpaid taxes and a corruption inquiry wants to interrogate him about an illegal $100,000 donation to the NSW ALP.

Yet despite these woes, Mr Huang’s support network appears to live on. And at least one young man from a band of Chinese-born friends to whom the billionaire served as a personal mentor is battling allegations he could be doing Mr Huang’s bidding.

Simon Zhou denies he has done anything wrong. He was reported in The Australian Financial Review last week saying he was “just a person quietly doing my job” as an independent member and deputy mayor of Ryde City Council in Sydney’s northwest.

Liberal councillor Jordan Lane told The Australian however that he was disturbed to learn Mr Zhou had failed to declare a $4m stake in a Huang property, the $82m Pymble Corporate Centre, possibly at earlier stages of the approval process for a shopping centre redevelopment project that could reap a $100m-plus profit.

Mr Zhou claims he transferred his 5 per cent Pymble stake to his mother after he joined the council in 2017. It then went to a business associate. But Mr Lane, who has called for an investigation, remains unsatisfied. “What if this unnamed associate is an associate of Mr Huang’s Yuhu Group company?” he said.

Mr Lane’s questions keep going. As deputy mayor, he says, Mr Zhou receives no financial entitlements yet runs an electorate office and employs a full-time assistant, Ste Lin, who previously worked with him at a now failed gold trading company.

Mr Zhou did not return calls, but has told his story to a Chinese website. Born in Hubei, China, in 1983, he arrived in Sydney aged 19 and made ends meet selling socks on eBay while studying at the University of NSW.

His big break came when he started Australian Gold and Silver Exchange as a company trading in gold, silver and collectibles. He formed a business association with Xudong (Chris) Wang through a company called ACX. Mr Zhou’s ACX would later collapse owing the tax office $2.54m while Mr Wang’s own company was forced to pay the ATO $20m in falsely claimed GST exemptions.

But the associations lived on. Before turning independent, Mr Zhou was a NSW Labor senate candidate at the 2016 election and joined colleagues from his gold business, Mr Wang, Mr Lin, Filip Shu and Min Wu, to donate $50,000 cash to a Chinese Friends of Labor dinner attended by Mr Huang. At the time Mr Zhou was very active in one of Mr Huang’s Chinese community groups now regarded as a “front” for Beijing.

In June Mr Zhou was the only councillor to oppose a council motion supporting protests in Hong Kong.