Netizen imprisoned for posts about big business released after 18 months

Boxun translation from Southern Weekend newspaper report:

On April 11, 2015, Wang Weihua (net name: “Heaven Earth Chivalrous Shadow”) left Urumqi’s Liudaowan Detention Center in Xinjiang Province. He’d been imprisoned there since October 2013, right after posting on a microblog in Shanghai, “The police are coming.”

Wang Weihua was a research fellow in network communications at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Several years ago, he quit to begin privately investing, and enjoyed writing online commentaries on China’s capital markets. He raised suspicions of fraud about the public Xinjiang company Guangqu Energy, and the company complained to the police. Urumqi police traveled to Shanghai to arrest him. Wang Weihua was charged with the crime of “damaging the business reputation” of Guangqu and sentenced to a year and a half in prison.

Guangqu Energy, which Wang accused of financial fraud, deceptively trading its own shares and other problems, is a subsidiary of the Xinjiang Guanghui Group, which owned by Xinjiang’s richest man, Sun Guanxin.

After his release, Wang Weihua returned to his home in Shanghai. In his first blog post after being released, he wrote: “No one in my family is in the hospital, none of my friends are in jail. Tthis is fortunate….” The post was retransmitted more than 1,000 times, far more than his original commentaries on capital market irregularities.

“My case may be considered a major event in the stock market, but in the legal system it’s a very small case. There are innocent people who are no longer alive, but I’m fine after being released from a year and a half in prison,” Wang Weihua said to journalists after being released.
http://www.boxun.com/news/gb/china/2015/05/201505012044.shtml