A ministerial ‘no’ to Huang Nubo
Minister of Interior Ogmundur Jonasson has refused the Chinese enrepreneur Huang Nubo the right to buy the big plot of land, Grimstadir a Fjollum, that he had his eyes on. As reported on Icelog earlier, the sale was a hot topic in Iceland.
Jonasson, from the Left Green party, seems to have angered his coalition partner, the social democrats. Minister of Economy and Trade Arni Pall Arnason said this weekend that this was a test for the coalition. Other leading social democrats have also expressed anger and irritation. Jonasson has already expressed his doubts. The answer hardly comes as a great surprise.
Nubo’s Icelandic plans have attracted great attention in the international media, ia the FT which yesterday had the latest development in the Nubo case on its front page, as has been the case with the paper’s earlier reporting. This interest indicates the focus not only on Iceland but on Chinese ventures abroad.
In my Ruv reporting I have pointed out that Nubo, though portrayed as one of China’s dollar billionaires, has no business ventures outside of China that indicate his ability to develop the huge tourism plans he seemed to have in mind for Grimstadir. His main foreign ventures are in the US where he ia owns a plot of land, plans to build a shopping mall, but hasn’t had the money, because of the crisis, to commence. He is also developing tourist fascilities at a ranch in Nashville. Due to opacity in the Chinese business environment, Nubo’s ventures are yet another example of how difficult it is to ascertain the real standing of Chinese companies.
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That Nubo increasingly looks suspect is not surprising. What is surprising is that some in the highest rungs of the Icelandic government would still like to proceed with the sale of 0.3% of the country’s real estate. This should come as a troubling sign.
Rajan P. Parrikar
27 Nov 11 at 6:22 pm
[…] Wenn man ein wenig sucht, findet man noch weitere kritische Stimmen zu Nubos Geschäftstätigkeit. Nach Angaben der isländischen Journalistin Sigrún Davíðsdóttir hat Nubo bisher keinerlei Geschäftstätigkeiten ausserhalb China gehabt, die seine Fähigkeiten zur Durchführung entsprechender Pläne wie in Nordisland erkennen lassen. So beschränken sich seine Geschäftstätigkeiten in den USA bisher auf den Kauf eines Landstücks, auf dem eine Shopping Mall errichtet werden sollte – ein Plan der bisher aufgrund von Geldmangel in Folge der Finanzkrise bisher nicht ausgeführt wurde. Ein kurzer Beitrag von ihr zu dem Thema findet sich hier (englischsprachig) hier. […]
Huang Nubo im Interview
28 Nov 11 at 12:03 pm
[…] *Previous Icelogs on the Nubo sale are here and here. […]
New Zealand worries over Chinese investment in dairy farms at Sigrún Davíðsdóttir's Icelog
16 Feb 12 at 7:32 pm
Whoa whoa whoa. Google, aren’t you stepping bneoyd your boundaries here? Isn’t it up to the website owner to decide what content they want to publish? Google is supposed to be based on a democratic philosophy. Now it’s more facist than ever. I don’t want to claim that Google IS fascist (far from it), but isn’t this a step towards that direction? I understand the importance of quality control, but there is a limit – and i think you crossed it here by penalizing websites that haven’t done anything except do what everybody else is doing. It’s one thing for Google to recommend how the web should exist – but it’s a completely different when Google is dictating to us how to manage and market our websites.
Beerly
30 Nov 15 at 7:23 pm