A British businessman who died in China in mysterious circumstances worked for an intelligence firm set up by former MI6 spies, it emerged today.
Neil Heywood, 41, a Harrow-educated consultant from Kensington, was found dead in a hotel room in the central city of Chongqing in November.
At the time Chinese authorities blamed alcohol poisoning and swiftly cremated Mr Heywood’s body without an autopsy.
Friends of the businessman, a fluent Mandarin speaker who had lived in China for more than a decade, raised suspicions saying he was not a heavy drinker and was in good health. His Chinese wife and two children did not challenge the official account and neither did his family in the UK.
The businessman’s mother, Ann Heywood, who lives in Streatham, and his sister Leonie, who lives in Tooting, both said he died of a heart attack when approached last night and refused to comment further. The intrigue surrounding the case has reached fever pitch in China as details of Mr Heywood’s links to the Communist party have come to light.
Mr Heywood had ties to Bo Xilai, 62, who was dismissed as Chongqing’s Communist Party chief after the city’s police chief Wang Lijun tried to defect at a US embassy in Chengdu in February.
Together, Mr Bo and Mr Wang became popular for a mafia-busting crusade to clean up the Chongqing city-municipality — which has a population of 32 million — of corrupt officials and business chiefs colluding with gangsters.
But Mr Wang fled to the US consulate in nearby Chengdu in early February after Mr Bo allegedly reacted angrily to an investigation he was involved in, it has since been claimed. Mr Wang was denied asylum.
Today it emerged that Mr Heywood worked for Hakluyt & Co a “British strategic intelligence firm” with its headquarters in Mayfair, but with operations around the globe including China.
A spokesman for the company said Mr Heywood had been providing services for Hakluyt on a case-by-case basis for some time without specifying the nature of his work.
“Neil had a long history of advising Western companies on China and we were among those who sought his advice. We are greatly saddened by his death,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
