China frees staff of US consulting firm after two years in prison

The release of Mintz Group staff comes amid Beijing’s efforts to revive foreign investment

File. The closed office of the Mintz Group is seen in an office building in Beijing on 24 March 2023 (AFP via Getty Images)

Chinese authorities have released five employees of a US due diligence firm from detention two years after China cracked down on consultancies working with foreign multinationals.

“We understand that the Mintz Group Beijing employees who were detained, all Chinese nationals, have now all been released,” Mintz Group said in a statement.

“We are grateful to the Chinese authorities that our former colleagues can now be home with their families.”

In 2023, Beijing’s public security bureau raided the Mintz Group office in the capital and detained the five employees – alarming foreign investors in the country.

This marked the start of a series of raids by Chinese authorities on foreign consultancy and due diligence firms, including Bain & Company and Capvision Partners.

Later that year, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that New York-headquartered Mintz Group had been fined $1.5m for undertaking “foreign-related statistical investigations” without seeking and obtaining necessary approvals.

In another notice on its website, the bureau claimed that Mintz Group conducted 37 such investigations from March 2019 to July 2022. As a penalty, the bureau seized 5.34 million yuan of the firm’s “illegal proceeds” and imposed an additional administrative fine of the same amount, bringing the total to roughly $1.5m.

File. The closed office of the Mintz Group is seen in an office building in Beijing on 24 March 2023 (AFP via Getty Images)

The US firm previously maintained that it was licensed to conduct legitimate business in China and has always operated within the law.

After the detentions in 2023, Mintz shut down its offices in both China and Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, the employees’ release on Tuesday came shortly after the China Development Forum, a key platform for Beijing to appeal to foreign investors.

Top business leaders like Apple’s Tim Cook and Pfizer’s Albert Bourla attended the event. Chinese premier Li Qiang assured increased market access for foreign investors and called for resisting protectionism, emphasising the need for global cooperation amid rising instability. It coincides with China’s efforts to attract investment amid slowing growth in the country’s economy and escalating tariffs from the US under president Donald Trump.