Investigators in Shanghai have detained a suspect linked to the deadly poisoning of 39-year-old billionaire tycoon Lin Qi, who died on Christmas Day. The alleged perpetrator is a 39-year-old employee of Lin’s company who has been identified by local media as Xu Yao. He is suspected of poisoning his boss with a rotten cup of pu’er (or fermented tea) on December 17, when he fell ill and never regained consciousness.
Lin’s net worth was estimated at approximately $ 1.3 billion.
Lin is the founder of Yoozoo Games, which developed the popular Chinese video game based on the Game of Thrones company called Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming.
Before he died, Lin worked on a Netflix project with Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss based on the popular Chinese sci-fi trilogy Reminder of Earth’s Past by Liu Cixin. The title has been listed as a favorite of Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg.
Lin’s company had bought the rights to the trilogy book The three-part body problem, that it tried to develop and produce, but the project was eventually abandoned due to infighting, it said The Hollywood Reporter.
Lin was listed as the executive producer of the project written by Alexander Woo. Xu is described as a senior executive for Yoozoo’s film and television division.