then General secretary Jiang Zemin. At the height of Lai's corruption in the 1990s, the Fujian party chief was Jia Qinglin. Xi Jinping, now CPC General Secretary, was the Fujian governor. Emigration Hong Kong Lai resided in Fujian province before he moved to Hong Kong in April 1991. While he was in HK, the Chinese government pursued him. Lai explained to the HK Immigration Department that he was in HK because he was a friend of Leung Kam-kwong, a senior immigration officer who later died in honor during the Immigration Tower fire in 2000. Leung apparently secretly warned Lai about the immigration department's pending warrant for his arrest. Leung also suggested Lai move to Canada to escape arrest. However, the HK government later responded that the claim was totally baseless as the officer was already dead and could not defend himself against these accusations. Canada Lai fled to Canada with his wife Zeng Mingna () and children in August 1999. He paid US$1 million in cash for a house in South Granville Rise Vancouver. His kids went to private schools at a cost of US$4,000 a year and his wife opened a bank account with a deposit of US$1.5 million. They were chauffeur-driven around in a US$90,000 SUV. In 1999 he was detained, apparently caught on a 28-day gambling spree at Casino Niagara in Niagara Falls. Lai was a regular customer at the casino where at one time bought as much as US$3 million worth of chips. Canadian police noticed him and suspected he was involved in money laundering or loan-sharking. Lai and his family then made a claim to stay in Canada as refugees. The family used a HKSAR passport to emigrate to Canada. Following heavy pressure from Beijing, Lai's Hong Kong permanent residency and HKSAR passport were revoked in 2002 by the Hong Kong Government, saying that he obtained the status dishonestly. Following his detention in Canada, Lai was able to obtain his release, pending the hearing into his refugee claim, by placing himself under house arrest. He returned to the family's luxury condo in Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver, and agreed to pay $80,000 per month to live under the guard of a private security firm. Notwithstanding such arrangements, Lai was observed by RCMP officers associating with known members of Asian smuggling gangs in Canada. Lai divorced his wife in June 2005. In 2009 Lai was granted