[Epoch Times, May 14, 2022]On May 13, Gao Weidong, director of the Coalfield Geology Bureau of Guizhou Province and former chairman of Maotai Group, sacked. His tenure in Moutai Group was only 17 months, and he was called the “shortest-lived chairman”.
According to public information, Gao Weidong was born in November 1972. He used to be the director and deputy mayor of Guiyang Municipal Transportation Bureau. From 2012 to 2016, he concurrently served as the Deputy Director of the Management Committee of Gui’an New District, Guizhou. Since February 2017, Gao Weidong has been transferred to Secretary of the Party Committee, Deputy Director and Director of the Guizhou Provincial Department of Communications.
In March 2020, he was appointed Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Maotai Group; in August 2021, Gao Weidong was appointed as the director of the Provincial Coalfield Geology Bureau.
Gao Weidong’s tenure in Moutai Group was only 17 months, making him the shortest tenure among the chairman since Kweichow Moutai went public in 2001.
On June 10, 2020, Kweichow Moutai’s annual general meeting was held. This was the “first show” of Gao Weidong’s general meeting 100 days after taking office.
China Net Finance once reported that the process of the shareholders’ meeting at that time “shrinked”, the “chairman’s speech” was “reading the manuscript for two hours”, and the executives left the stage collectively; the meeting also canceled the shareholder interaction session, and did not give small and medium shareholders the opportunity to ask questions .
The mainland WeChat public account “Politics Circle” reported that during the period when Gao Weidong was the chairman, Maotai experienced the “donation gate” storm. In October 2020, Kweichow Moutai announced that it plans to donate to four projects, involving an amount of 820 million yuan. However, this large donation immediately aroused questions from small and medium shareholders, and more than 100 small and medium shareholders initiated a joint lawsuit. On February 9, 2021, Kweichow Moutai announced the termination of the above donation.
On December 16, 2020, Gao Weidong said at the Guizhou Moutai Maotai Maotai Series Liquor National Distributors Association that the company expects to complete the sales of Maotai series liquor of 29,500 tons in 2020, and achieve tax-included sales of 10.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4. %.
On December 31, 2020, the Shanghai Stock Exchange issued an announcement stating that Gao Weidong released important information related to the company’s operations on his own through non-legal information disclosure channels, and paid regulatory attention to it. On the same day, the Guizhou Supervision Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission also issued a warning letter to Gao Weidong.
In recent years, many senior executives of Moutai Group have been sacked. These include former chairman Yuan Renguo, former party secretary and general manager Liu Zili; former party committee member and deputy general manager Gao Shouhong; former deputy general manager of Moutai Group Fang Guoxing; former deputy general manager and financial director of Kweichow Moutai Tan Dinghua; Moutai Liquor Co., Ltd. Ma Yupeng, former assistant general manager of the company, former deputy secretary of the party committee and general manager of Moutai Sales Co., Ltd.; former director, chairman and legal representative of Group E-Commerce Co., Ltd. Nie Yonghe, former vice chairman and general manager Xiao Huawei, etc.
On September 23, 2021, Yuan Renguo, former chairman of Kweichow Moutai Group Co., Ltd., was sentenced to life imprisonment, accused of illegally accumulating more than 112.9 million yuan.
Yuan Renguo was accused of using the right to operate Moutai to cling to Wang Xiaoguang, former member of the Standing Committee of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee and vice governor, and Wang Sanyun, the former secretary of the Gansu Provincial Party Committee who was the former deputy secretary of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee.
A person close to Maotai’s management told Caixin.com that Yuan Renguo seriously “violated approvals” during his tenure in office, which caused Maotai’s distribution system to gradually get out of control, and many dealers hoarded and hyped the price of Maotai. The approval note refers to the distribution qualification of authorized Moutai liquor. Most of Yuan Renguo’s distributors have an extraordinary background.
Responsible editor: Xu Menger