Crown Resorts employee's husband fears for wife arrested in China
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Version 0 of 1. The husband of a woman caught up in a major Chinese police crackdown targeting Australia’s Crown casino giant has rejected claims she was involved in any illegal activity and spoken of his fears that she may be jailed. Jeff Sikkema said he had not seen his wife, Jiang Ling, a Shanghai-based employee of Crown, since the early hours of last Friday when she was taken from the couple’s home in Shanghai by police. Jiang was one of 18 employees of James Packer’s Crown Resorts, including three senior Australian executives, who were detained in a coordinated series of police actions across the country at around the same time. Those now under arrest are thought to include Jason O’Connor, the head of Crown’s VIP international team who was responsible for attracting Chinese “high-roller” gamblers to the company’s casinos. China’s foreign ministry has said the group is being held on suspicion of “gambling crimes”. Sikkema, 53, told the Guardian he had initially thought his wife was only being taken in for routine questioning and would be released quickly. But Sikkema, who is from Michigan, US, but has lived in Shanghai for about 15 years, said he now feared she might be facing a lengthy period behind bars after receiving a formal arrest notice on Sunday. “The conviction rate in China is 99.9%,” he said. The formal notification of Jiang’s arrest, seen by the Guardian, states that she is being held according to article 80 of China’s criminal procedure law on suspicion of “committing gambling crimes”. Article 80 stipulates that a person caught committing a crime or a major suspect may be taken into custody for a variety of reasons including if they are “making preparations to commit a crime, committing a crime or immediately after committing a crime”; if “there is a chance of them destroying or fabricating evidence or colluding statements with others”; or if they are “major criminal suspects that have committed crimes across regions, committed multiple crimes, or committed crimes as part of a gang”. Sikkema rejected the suggestion his wife had committed a crime. “She’s done absolutely nothing illegal … She does admin stuff. She is the admin manager of the Shanghai area. So she processes visas. She gets information from potential Crown customers that want to go to Australia to gamble. She takes their information, she compiles it, she fills out the forms, get their passports, takes it down to the consulate, drops off all the information and then when it is ready, she comes picks it up and sends it out to the customer. This is the most boring job in the world.” Sikkema said he believed Crown’s entire China-based staff was now being held by police. “This isn’t just my wife – it’s everyone in China.” Sikkema said he had already gone to bed last Thursday night when the crackdown began. At about midnight, a group of six police officers appeared outside the couple’s home in Shanghai. “I was woken up by a Chinese policeman standing in the doorway, while I very nicely told him to: ‘Get the fuck out of my bedroom – I need to put my pants on.’ To which he responded: ‘Well, I’m the police.’ I said: ‘I don’t care who the fuck you are. I don’t have any pants on.’ So that was pleasant to start with.” Sikkema said police then proceeded to question Jiang, who uses the English name Jenny, for about three hours about topics related to her work with Crown. “They were speaking Shanghainese … so I didn’t get much of anything,” he said. In the early hours of Friday morning the officers announced they would be taking Jiang to a police station for further interrogation. Despite this Sikkema said his wife did not seem overly concerned. “I felt she really thought it was just going to be going to the station for a few more questions and she’d be released probably before I got up in the morning,” he said. “She insisted that I stay at home. I said, ‘Should I contact your father? Should I contact a lawyer?’ She was like, ‘No, no, no, that’s not needed. Don’t worry about that.’” “When I talked to the police and I said, ‘Pardon me, how do I get hold of you? Can I get a name card or something? … Or know where you are taking her?’ They were like, ‘No, if we need to talk to you we will call you. Don’t call us.’” “Sadly, jokingly, at the time, I said, ‘What if you are gone for a week?’ And everyone present just sort of laughed, including my wife. It seems not as funny now as it was when I said it.” He added: “It was just going to be a little thing. But obviously it is not now.” Sikkema said he had been alarmed to discover through an intermediary with knowledge of the police investigation that his wife might have confessed to escorting Crown customers in China to the company’s casinos in Australia. “That is the easiest confession in the world to debunk. Because she has never been to Australia, She doesn’t have an Australian visa and her passport can prove that,” he said. “The fact that they are saying they have a confession from her with her saying that worries me a lot … I don’t know what they are doing that made her confess that – an obvious, blatant lie.” Sikkema said he had not been allowed to speak to or visit his wife who is being held at Shanghai’s Number Two Detention Centre. But he had written her a letter that he hoped would delivered by a lawyer on Monday. “I love you. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me,” the letter says. “Everybody’s working to get you out.” Additional reporting by Christy Yao |