A major Chinese state-owned manufacturer of heavy equipment is now facing criminal charges.
Police in Ontario have filed criminal charges against one of XCMG’s officials for allegedly tampering with serial number plates on equipment they were selling in Canada.
Documents filed in the Ontario Court of Justice show that XCMG Canada official Tao Li is accused of defrauding an Ontario distributor for $21 million.
XCMG is one of the world’s largest builders of heavy equipment and in recent months, the company been involved in civil lawsuits where it has been accused of fraudulently changing out serial numbers on its machines to make them appear newer than they actually were.
Veteran heavy equipment dealer Ryan Martin told Global News in mid-October that his business started with XCMG in 2017 and the relationship was good up until about 2021.
“It’s destroyed our family,” he said.
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“It’s destroyed our family business.”
Martin’s family company is Arctic Machinery with dealerships in Prince George, Chilliwack and Kelowna.
He said other XCMG dealers in Canada also had similar problems and in troubleshooting them, they said they found evidence to support their claim.
“There was a process of changing serial number plates and changing the years of the machines in order to maybe misrepresent to the end user what they were buying,” Martin said.
In July, a Saskatchewan dealer filed a suit against XCMG alleging unlawful tampering with serial number plates on equipment sold to them in Alberta this year.
LTR Equipment, based in Quebec, filed a similar case and a lift company in Ontario has also filed a case, alleging serial numbers were tampered with.
“As an example, it would be built in 2020, but really sold to us as a 2022 machine,” Martin said. “That kind of stuff.”
XCMG Canada did not respond to Global News’ request for an interview on Thursday.
In a previous statement, the company said it was fully defending claims in the civil actions.
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Source: globalnews.ca
