A high-ranking executive of a Chinese solar panel maker was arrested on arrival at Munich airport in Germany accused of white-collar crime dating back several years to now-defunct EU trade measures against the Asian giant.
The arrest took place just two days before the Intersolar exposition and conference in the Bavarian capital, which is not only the world’s biggest solar show but an event dominated by Chinese producers. Intersolar had no comment when approached by Recharge.
German federal police confirmed to Recharge that the man from a company in Jiangsu arriving on a flight from Shanghai was detained and brought to a public prosecutor’s office in nearby Augsburg.
“The accused was brought before the magistrate, and subsequently released,” probably on bail, the prosecutor said. The police didn’t reveal the man’s identity but said the charges against him date back to white-collar crime from 2015 to 2017, followed by an arrest warrant in 2019.
The lawyer defending the Chinese national told Recharge that at this point she couldn’t tell whether the charges were correct, but also confirmed that they relate to supposed crimes dating several years back, in relation to EU anti-dumping and countervailing duties against Chinese solar producers.
Europe’s – and especially Germany’s – solar manufacturers in the last decade were largely pushed out of business by Chinese competitors, helped by generous Chinese state financing, cheap labour and sometimes dumping practices.
The European Commission, which coordinates EU trade policy, in a desperate attempt to save the European solar sector, from 2013 to 2018 imposed fair-trade measures that included a complex minimum import price scheme for Chinese produce.
But the policy was eventually abandoned as Chinese manufacturers quickly built manufacturing plants in Southeast Asian countries to circumvent the EU’s restrictions – while almost no European panel makers were left anyway, and the measure also drove up solar panel prices in Europe, harming solar installers and other players in the supply chain.
Chinese media in the wake of the Munich arrest Monday warned of a possible crackdown against the nation's solar executives and pointed to alleged similar arrests in 2019.
The Augsburg public prosecutor, however, rejected such claims, saying the arrest came due to old criminal proceedings.
“It has no relation to current events in the solar sector, or current energy policy,” he told Recharge.
