Li Pak-tam is the founder and former chairman of the board of Beijing Zhaode Investment Co and has also started a number of companies in Hong Kong.[5]
In 2016 Li was implicated in the Panama Papers leak. The documents revealed that he was the owner of a firm named Fung Shing Development Ltd., which had been set up in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven. His daughter Jasmine was also named in the Panama Papers, her shell company Harvest Sun Trading Ltd. shared a director, Polly Pau Tsz-yim, with her father's BVI shell company.[5] In 2015 The New York Times reported that Li was using an employee named Pan Yongbin as a proxy to hold 32 million shares of Wanda Group, then valued at $200 million.[8]
In October 2019, Li's stake in Canoo was revealed by a lawsuit filed by Christina Krause, the wife of co-founder Stefan Krause. Along with Li, Krause and German industrialist David Stern were Canoo's primary backers.[1] The company started in 2017 when Krause pitched Li and Stern on the idea in Hong Kong. After the meeting, the three reportedly entered into a gentleman's agreement to start the company. Li and Stern provided the startup capital.[9]