Liu Han

Liu Han was born in 1965 in Guanghan, Sichuan province, the middle child in a family with three sons and two daughters. His father, Liu Zhangke (刘章科), was a veteran of the Korean War, who worked as a secondary school physics teacher after leaving the army. He died in 1990. His mother, Li Wanzhen (李万珍), worked as a street vendor. ==Early career and assassination attempt==

In the mid-1980s, Liu Han began buying and reselling timber, construction material, and petroleum. In the early 1990s, he started to operate gambling dens in Guanghan with his brother Liu Wei. He entered the commodity market in the mid-1990s, trading soy beans and steel between 1994 and 1997, which earned him hundreds of millions of yuan. ==Hanlong Group==

Liu Han founded Hanlong Group in 1997. In 2000, he moved the conglomerate's headquarters from Mianyang to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. Hanlong also bid $1.3 billion for Sundance Resources, another Australian mining company, but the deal collapsed after Liu Han was arrested in March 2013 on multiple charges. Liu Han owned more than 70 subsidiary companies with business in energy, mining, real estate, finance, and securities. His assets were officially valued at 40 billion yuan (US$6.4 billion). ==Prosecution and execution==

Liu Han and his brother Liu Wei attracted the attention of the central government after a January 2009 shooting at a Guanghan teahouse. Liu Wei allegedly ordered the attack, which killed three men including the rival gang boss Chen Fuwei, who had been recently released from prison. The brothers had allegedly ordered the killing of others, including a villager who led a protest against one of their real estate projects in Mianyang, a rival gang boss in Mianyang, and an old neighbour in Guanghan. Liu Han was found guilty on thirteen charges, including murder, running casinos and a mafia-like gang, and selling firearms. They appealed to the High People's Court of Hubei, which upheld the original sentences in August 2014. Liu Han and Liu Wei were executed on 9 February 2015, along with three associates. ==Philanthropy==

Until Liu Han's arrest and trial, he was best known as a philanthropist. He gained fame in China in the aftermath of the Great Sichuan earthquake of 2008, in which thousands of children died when several schools built by the state collapsed. In contrast, the school Liu Han built withstood the quake and all of its students survived the disaster unharmed. He also made major donations in the subsequent relief efforts. ==Personal==

Liu Han had a passion for cars, and boasted that he owned 80 luxury cars. He was an avid gambler who sometimes gambled all night long. During his trial, he said he lost $128 million gambling in Macau, $15 million in the United States, and millions more in Singapore and Australia. ==References==