The chairman of a Chinese financial conglomerate who tried to forge a business relationship with President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has reportedly been detained by police.
Anbang Insurance, which claims to have almost $300 billion in assets, said its chairman, Wu Xiaohui, cannot perform his duty "for personal reasons," and has delegated his authority to other executives, the South China Morning Post reported.
According to The New York Times, an unnamed company executive and a business partner of Anbang confirmed Wu had been detained.
Anbang had recently been on a global buying spree, acquiring the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan for almost $2 billion in 2013, among other businesses, the Times reported.
The detention follows a move last month by China's insurance regulator to bar the company from offering new insurance products for three months, the Times reported; regulators said the discipline was taken because of improper sales of insurance products.
The Chinese language magazine Caijing reported earlier Tuesday authorities had taken Wu away for investigation, reporting the China Insurance Regulatory Commission had met with the company's executives Saturday and informed them Wu had been taken away, the Morning Post reported.
The Caijing report, which had no further details, was later deleted, the Morning Post reported.
Wu met with Kushner last November in a bid to buy a stake in a Manhattan office building partly owned by Kushner's family company, the Times reported.
The deal was eventually abandoned after media coverage that highlighted a perceived conflict of interest; Kushner's responsibilities as senior adviser in the White House include relations with China, the Times reported.
Last year, Anbang spent more than $6 billion for a collection of luxury hotels across the United States, the Times reported. The seller of those hotels was the Blackstone Group, whose chairman and chief executive, Stephen Schwarzman, is a Trump business adviser, according to the Times.
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