I wrote at the end of December how the Chinese government was unimpressed with company bosses who were closing up shop in Guangdong and Shandong provinces and running back to their home countries with their suitcases literally stuffed with the company’s proceeds. Of course, this course of action is highly illegal, as many staff remain to be paid and many taxes and fees much change hands with local government officials.

Today’s Financial Times reports that Chinese company owners are doing the exact same thing in the African country, The Democratic Republic of Congo.

“More than 40 Chinese-run copper smelters are standing idle in the Democratic Republic of Congo after their owners fled the country without paying taxes or compensating staff at the end of the commodity?boom, according to a governor.”

The circumstances surrounding the flight from Congolese justice sounds remarkably like that in the industrialized Pearl River Delta and Bohai regions.

“When global commodity prices tumbled, the result in Katanga was painful: in the space of weeks luxury house-building projects and freshly imported Jeeps vanished to be replaced by unemployment and rising crime.”

The Congolese government – like their gray-suited government counterparts in China – are singularly unimpressed with their errant guests.

““They didn’t pay their people, they didn’t respect anything. We have already written to them to ask them to give severance pay to their staff and to pay the tax due to the government.

“If they don’t, we are going to ask the court to auction their properties to pay the bills.”

I don’t imagine the Congolese will be rolling out the red carpet to Chinese businessmen anytime soon.