Pictures of Yuan Yafei meeting Prince William adorn the walls of the VIP area in House of Fraser’s store in Nanjing, eastern China.
The photographs were taken at Kensington Palace in October 2015, when the supposed billionaire and the prince signed a memorandum of understanding to set up a wildlife conservation fund.
Yuan, chairman of the Chinese conglomerate Sanpower Group, was riding high at the time. A year earlier, Sanpower had bought the department store chain House of Fraser and the US gadget retailer Brookstone.
A few days after the Kensington Palace summit, C.banner, a Hong Kong-listed company run by Yuan’s brother-in-law, Chen Yixi, bought the toy shop Hamleys.
