Patrick Devillers describes Neil Heywood as ‘noble soul’

Both he and Mr Heywood had much in common, he said. They were Westerners who
were married to Chinese women, living in a remote industrial city and
connected to its most powerful couple.

Mr Heywood had tried very hard to bring British investors into the city, he
said, but the two men were not involved in similar businesses.

“What we had in common is that we were both married to Chinese women, we knew
each other, I could say of him in any case he was not a bragger, he had a
noble spirit in the tradition of British honour,” he said.

The French architect, now living in Cambodia, had moved to China in 1987 to
study Mandarin and architecture at Shanghai’s Tongji University where he met
his wife, a Chinese classical musician.

In 1992, they moved to Dalian where he took a job with the city’s architecture
department. He met Mrs Gu, a powerful corporate lawyer, after watching her
make a presentation to potential investors.

“She was very articulate and brilliant,” he said. He approached her for help
with clients who had not paid his fees and later became a friend of the
family.

He said Dalian was place of “incredible energy” where Mr Bo had a reputation
for getting things done.

“Bo got everything moving,” he said. While his senior staff regarded him as
strict and feared being caught drinking in the city’s karaoke bars, the
mayor regarded the French architect as a foreigner with interesting ideas.

“In his eyes, I was a sort of artist,” he said.

His own architectural projects however never got the financial backing they
needed, he said, and he now regards his Dalian years as a “lost decade,” he
said.

His relationship with the Bo family became one of friendship. He was invited
to their home and was later asked to escort their young son Guagua to
Britain where he was a pupil at Harrow — the young boy called him “uncle”.
He had never sought nor been given any financial compensation, he said.

Two companies cited in newspaper reports as potential fronts for the Bo
family’s financial dealings were in fact an architecture firm which had
never got off the ground, and his father’s property company, which had no
involvement in improper transactions, he said.

He had left China in the years following his 2003 divorce without any of the
riches he is alleged to have acquired. “I left China as I arrived, with
nothing,” he told the paper.

Views: 0

You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress | Designed by: Premium WordPress Themes | Thanks to Themes Gallery, Bromoney and Wordpress Themes