How a UK big pharma exec was arrested in China – and hasn’t been heard from since

It was an announcement that shocked the corporate world – wiping £14bn from the share price of Britain’s biggest company in a single day, and demonstrating the risks of doing business in China.

Last November, AstraZeneca admitted that one of its top executives – the head of its Chinese operations – had been arrested. But the drugmaker’s problems went deeper than that. It turned out that scores of employees had been sucked into an insurance fraud scandal.

Shareholders were desperate for answers. What was going on at AZ?

It’s an enduring mystery.

Eight months on, its China President, Leon Wang, remains in detention – as far as anyone knows, at least. His condition and whereabouts are still unknown.

Chinese investigations into the company are continuing. Yet far from being deterred from further investment in the country, the pharmaceutical giant has reacted by pouring billions into its facilities there.

The fallout has alarmed many AZ shareholders and human rights campaigners alike – with the company accused of “kowtowing and greed”.

Experts say it also renews concerns about the wisdom and security of British companies operating inside China, despite the UK Government trying to boost financial ties between the two countries.

In the words of one drugs industry expert, Peter Humphrey – who knows what it’s like to be thrown in a Chinese cell – “we should not be putting business ahead of our citizens’ life-and-death risks”.

China is AstraZeneca’s second largest international market (Photo: Budrul Chukrut/Sopa/LightRocket via Getty)

The arrest that sparked the mystery

In September 2024, it emerged that Chinese police had arrested several people linked to AstraZeneca over suspicions that an unlicensed liver cancer drug had been imported illegally.

Weeks later, the London-based company posted a statement on its website. It was just three sentences long, but disclosed that Wang – an executive vice president at AZ, as well as its China chief – was under investigation and “cooperating” with police, apparently over a separate but unspecified investigation.

A Chinese national, Wang had studied English at university in Shanghai in the early 90s before embarking on a business career. He joined AZ in 2013 and was promoted three times. He became one of the 10 most powerful people at the firm.

Now, however, he was in trouble. A few days after that first announcement, AZ admitted Wang had in fact been detained.

The company maintained it did not know the reason for his arrest. But it did reveal something else: that yet another Chinese probe, the third one linked to AZ, had been ongoing for three years and had already led to 100 now former staff members being given prison sentences.

Those cases centred around insurance fraud. Investigators found that sales representatives and lab workers had been modifying patients’ genetic test results, to ensure that AZ’s lung cancer drug Tagrisso could be prescribed to them through health insurance.

Leon Wang was based at AstraZeneca’s Chinese office in Shanghai (Photo: Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty)

This cascade of progressively worse news sent the firm’s shares tumbling 8.4 per cent on the London Stock Exchange on 5 November alone, although some analysts felt this was an overreaction by investors.

China’s Ministry of Public Security has never commented. But AZ placed Wang on extended leave, putting a Croatian executive in his role.

Come February, AZ’s CEO, Sir Pascal Soriot, told a press conference in London that his firm had been denied permission to speak to Wang. “We all think about Leon and miss him, and we wish him the best,” Soriot said. “But the reality is we are not able to talk to him.”

And since then? Little has changed, besides the firm receiving a demand from China for £1.2m to cover suspected unpaid import taxes.

A City insider, who manages AZ shareholdings for a leading wealth management firm, says they are in the dark. “It’s all gone very quiet.”

Sir Pascal Soriot, right, said of Leon Wang: ‘We are not able to talk to him’ (Photos: AZ/Getty)

What has happened to Wang? 

Nobody knows about the risks of working in China’s drugs industry better than the British private detective Peter Humphrey.

In 2013, he was hired by AZ’s biggest UK-based rival, GSK, to investigate corruption allegations and a suspected smear campaign. The pharmaceutical giant had received claims that its British-born China chief, Mark Reilly, was ordering staff to bribe medics to use GSK products. Later, the firm was sent a sex tape involving Reilly.

GSK asked Humphrey to find out who was behind it. But then the Chinese authorities began investigating GSK themselves – and detained Humphrey and his wife on spying charges. A year later, both were given prison sentences. Reilly was deported after pleading guilty to bribery and GSK was fined £297m.

Humphrey and his wife both spent 23 months in Chinese cells before their release in 2015 on health grounds. The pair always maintained their innocence.

“It’s no surprise that Wang has been held for a long time without us hearing a word about why or what’s going to happen next. Even a detainee does not know from one day to the next why they’re being held sometimes,” he tells The i Paper.

“This is not a country with the rule of law as we understand it. There are no fair and transparent trials, and due process gets thrown out the window.”

Chinese detention centres can be hell for inmates. “The conditions in which I was held were so harsh that they were tantamount to torture.”

Humphrey has described how he was held in a cell with 11 other men and “locked in an iron chair inside a steel cage” for interrogations. He was not allowed any letters and didn’t see his teenage son for two years.

Peter Humphrey, centre, and his wife, left, appearing in court in 2014 (Photo: China Global Television Network)

Of course, the Chinese police may have reasonable grounds for suspicion in Wang’s case. Complex investigations can take years, as they do in the UK.

But that doesn’t excuse the lack of information, and there could be another explanation for his arrest, adds Humphrey.

He added: “I’ve heard from pharma industry sources in China that Wang had some kind of political ambitions and may have clashed with a rival. It is quite common in China for somebody to be arrested because he has trodden on the toes of an influential Communist Party member or official.

“The Chinese legal and judicial system basically allows room for influential, well-connected people to make revenge attacks against someone they don’t like.”

It is not unusual for China’s titans of industry to disappear for months or even years for what appear to be political reasons. Since becoming President in 2013, Xi Jinping has used a supposed anti-corruption initiative to remind the country’s richest entrepreneurs who is boss. Alibaba founder Jack Ma and banking mogul Bao Fan both vanished for long periods.

Desmond Shum, a former property developer from Hong Kong who now lives in the UK, revealed in 2021 how his billionaire ex-wife, Whitney Duan, was detained. She has since been released but most of her money has been confiscated and she’s unable to leave the country.

Shum claims a dangerous practice has developed called “Yuanyang Bulao,” roughly translating as “distant sea fishing”.

“When the local finances of various county governments become worse, they cross provinces to arrest businesspeople in China on trumped-up charges and then blackmail them: ‘If you want to be released, pay us $2m,’” he said.

On the other hand, it’s well-known in China how corrupt healthcare can be. “It’s very dirty,” Shum tells The i Paper. For doctors, bribes are “a major source of income”.

Uncertainty is intimidating, he adds. “They want to dash your hopes by saying: ‘We can hold you for as long as we want to.’”

Desmond Shum knows from ex-wife Whitney Duan’s ordeal how businesspeople can disappear in China’s legal system (Photo: Desmond Shum)

Risks to British businesses 

The risks for foreign businesses operating in China have grown in recent years, with a trend of police raids and indefinite detentions.

In 2023, police in Shanghai arrested three people linked to GroupM, a division of the UK-based advertising company WPP, over bribery allegations. Prosecutors have reportedly sought long prison sentences.

But given the huge size of the Chinese economy, Sir Keir Starmer has made improving business links a priority.

After Chancellor Rachel Reeves travelled to Beijing in January, the UK Government announced the two countries will “continue to deepen trade links”.

A former British diplomat who has served in China, who asked not to be named, says the Prime Minister is “right to try and boost our exports with China”. But actually operating inside the country is a different matter.

“If there’s a business dispute, it’s quite common for top executives to be arrested and basically held hostage until the foreign side caves in,” they warn.

Even official UK government advice states Chinese courts “can be influenced by ongoing political campaigns”. It adds: “There have been incidents of foreign nationals being subject to threats and intimidation.”

AstraZeneca is continuing to invest billions in China (Photo: Jade Gao/AFP via Getty)

All this makes AstraZeneca’s continued appetite for Chinese business more notable.

In March, AZ boasted that it was going to build a new research and development facility in Beijing – costing £1.9bn – after announcing annual Chinese revenues were up 21 per cent.

Sources at the company underline that only about a third of AZ’s research and production faciltities are located in China, despite it being the firm’s second largest market – and that the fast pace of trials there benefits patients around the world.

However, the former Conservative party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has accused AZ of “rapacious greed” and of obsequiousness towards Xi’s regime. “Profits come before people in AstraZeneca,” the MP said last month.

Humphrey agrees. He worries Wang has been “thrown to the wolves… I may be wrong but I get the impression that AZ is not doing much to help him”.

He urges more caution from ministers and British business leaders towards China, saying: “We should not be putting our citizens at risk.”

AstraZeneca and the Government did not comment.

AZ still has challenges ahead. From a yearly high at the beginning of September last year, its share price is still down by about 20 per cent overall, although analysts suggest Donald Trump’s hefty tariffs against China may be the main reason for this.

Soriot is reportedly considering delisting in London and floating the company in New York instead. That would be a major blow for the City, and lead some to think the firm is more committed to China than the UK, despite the risks.

Such matters, however, will be of little concern to Wang – wherever he’s sitting in sitting in a cell right now, wondering what his fate will be.