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Getting Money Out of China: It’s Complicated, Part 2
(Before It's News)
In yesterday’s post, Getting Money Out of China: It’s Complicated, I wrote about how incredibly frequently Western companies have been seeking the help of my firm’s China lawyers in an (often desperate) effort to get money out of China so they can get funds due to them on all sorts of deals. On our China Law Blog Facebook Page, I linked over to the original post and described it as “In which we begin to answer THE question everybody is asking.”
That has turned out to be no exaggeration. That post has already had nearly 5,000 views and despite it being the weekend, I alone have received two reporter queries and at least a half dozen e-mails from people asking for our help to get money out of China. I can only assume that were I to survey my firm’s China lawyers that half dozen number would be at more than a dozen. Again, though, most of the requests deal with the purchasing of single family homes and, people, slapping together 3-5 single family homes and calling it a fund is not likely to make any difference with the Chinese government allowing money to leave!
In this post, I will discuss the three factors the Chinese government uses to allow funds to leave China to go to a Western company. Based on the many deals on which our China attorneys have worked, and the reports we get from our clients and their bankers and financiers, and from China consultants and bankers and financiers with whom we regularly share information, we see legitimacy and benefit to China and deal structure as the three key elements. In this post, I will address “legitimacy.” In subsequent posts, I will address the other factors.
By legitimacy we mean exactly that. If a China company needs a $5 million dollar piece of industrial equipment for its factory and it pays $5 million for that industrial equipment, the deal will almost certainly go through. My law firm has a number of U.S. and European clients who sell this sort of equipment and for whom we have drafted contracts that work and none of these clients have reached out to us with any problems. Nor has any other company selling such equipment legitimately.
Just to repeat. Chinese company needs $5 million in industrial equipment to make its factory run better, the Chinese government will almost certainly allow the money to go through. Why then do we get so many calls and emails from U.S. and European (usually for us, German or Italian or Spanish) companies who are not getting paid for their industrial equipment sales? Two reasons. Bad contract and an appearance or a reality of illegitimacy. I will save the contract aspects for a later post and address just the legitimacy element in this one.
Here are the situations where we have seen problems on what should be a routine equipment purchase:
1. The foreign company is selling the $5 million piece of equipment for $8 million. Come on. If you have sold your $5 million piece of equipment to China five times in the last year for $5 million and now all of a sudden you are selling it for $8 million, the Chinese government is going to assume that you have some sort of side deal with your Chinese buyer to funnel some large portion of the $3 million extra to a bank account held by the owner of your Chinese buyer in your home country. When we have been armed with evidence to the contrary (perhaps you have added all sorts of bells and whistles to the $5 million machine, for example), the odds are good on your eventually getting the money out. But if you are in fact planning to push over the $3 million or so extra to your Chinese friend, the odds are not so good that the money will ever leave China.
2. The foreign company is selling the $5 million piece of industrial equipment to an advertising agency in China. Come on.
3. The foreign company selling the $5 million piece of industrial equipment has never sold anything to China previously and the Chinese company buying the $5 million piece of industrial equipment has never previously bought anything similar from overseas before. If your deal is truly legitimate, you ought to be able to prove it and you ought to be able to get paid. If your deal is really just a scam, your odds are really more. Note: our China lawyers love taking on the former type of matter but we will not take on the later.
4. The foreign company selling the $5 million piece of industrial equipment is wholly owned or largely owned or even partially owned by an ethnic Chinese. Call it discrimination or call it whatever else you want, but we often see deals involving ethnic Chinese on the foreign side held up to much greater scrutiny by the Chinese government. I first wrote about this Chinese government criteria back in January of this year, in Getting Money Out of China: What The Heck is Happening?
Get this one: Money will not be sent to any company on a services transaction unless that company can show that it does not have any Chinese owners. The alleged purpose behind this “rule” is again to prevent the sort of transactions ordinarily used to illegally move money out of China. Never heard this one until this month.
Things were a lot better in January and this criteria has only become more real. There are various completely legal things that can be done to alleviate this problem and improve your odds on this one, but it would be better for our firm’s clients that I not mention them here.
Bottom Line: When I wrote yesterday’s post on getting money out of China, I envisioned a two, maybe a three part series. The deluge of questions I have received just since then has convinced me that this issue is too pressing, too important, and too multi-dimensional to be contained in a series that short. This seems to be THE big issue right now and we plan to write on it until we have exhausted it. So keep your questions coming.
We will be discussing the practical aspects of Chinese law and how it impacts business there. We will be telling you what works and what does not and what you as a businessperson can do to use the law to your advantage. Our aim is to assist businesses already in China or planning to go into China, not to break new ground in legal theory or policy.
Source: http://www.chinalawblog.com/2016/12/getting-money-out-of-china-its-complicated-part-2.html
