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Hubei's former richest man Ai Luming criminally detained on suspicion of illegally absorbing public deposits
Ai Luming, the former richest man in Hubei and former head of Dangdai Group, was criminally detained by the Wuhan Public Security Bureau on July 8, 2026, on suspicion of illegally absorbing public deposits. His defense lawyer, Lan He, said that two meeting requests since July 23 have been blocked. Ai Luming started his career by collecting urine from public toilets to extract urokinase, gradually building a hundred-billion-level Dangdai conglomerate spanning pharmaceuticals, finance, and real estate. At its peak, it held stakes in multiple listed companies such as Humanwell Healthcare and Tianfeng Securities. In 2021, Dangdai Group's debt crisis erupted, and in 2024 it entered bankruptcy restructuring with liabilities as high as 80.6 billion yuan. A subsidiary of China Merchants Group participated in the restructuring with 11.8 billion yuan, and control of Humanwell Healthcare has changed hands. Regulatory investigations show that Dangdai Group accumulated non-operational occupation of 12.785 billion yuan of Humanwell Healthcare's funds and over 4 billion yuan of Sante Cableways' funds, while Tianfeng Securities illegally provided over 8.5 billion yuan in financing for Dangdai Group. Ai Luming was successively fined over 10 million yuan and banned from the securities market for life. This criminal detention mainly targets the comprehensive default of targeted financing products issued by Changzhongsuo under the Dangdai conglomerate, with the suspected illegally absorbed public deposits amounting to approximately 4.8 billion yuan, and the flow of funds still to be investigated.