Alleged Hong Kong fugitive and property mogul Wei Zeng has entered a not guilty plea in connection with his arrest at the Saipan International Airport last Jan. 16.<\/p>\n
At an arraignment on Monday afternoon, Zeng, who appeared with court-appointed counsel Bruce Berline, waived the advisement of his constitutional rights and the reading of the charges against him.<\/p>\n
Zeng, also known as Zhiqian Liu, pleaded not guilty to the indictment charging him with use of a false document and misuse of a passport.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona set the jury trial for April 14, 2014, at 10am.<\/p>\n
Zeng was remanded back to the custody of the U.S. Marshal.<\/p>\n
Assistant U.S. attorney Rami Badawy appeared for the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
Also on Monday, Manglona issued an order that denied bail for Zeng in his provisional arrest warrant matter.<\/p>\n
Zeng arrived on Saipan from Shanghai, China, and allegedly used a different identity to try to enter the island.<\/p>\n
The Hong Kong government is seeking Zeng\u2019s extradition due to a pending case against him. According to the U.S. government, the Hong Kong District Court issued a warrant for Zeng\u2019s arrest after he allegedly bribed a Hong Kong bank official with HK 2.3 million ($300,000) in October 2010.<\/p>\n
The cash was allegedly a reward for the bank official\u2019s help in a multi-million Hong Kong dollar loan extension application and for giving favorable credit information relating to Zeng\u2019s two companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alleged Hong Kong fugitive and property mogul Wei Zeng has entered a not guilty plea…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[169,295,338,257],"class_list":["post-27410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-china","tag-hk","tag-hong-kong","tag-nmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}