THE owner of a well-known property agency in Shenzhen reportedly went missing Tuesday with 40 million yuan (US$5.4 million), paralyzing the 2,000-employee company.

The 100-plus offices of Zhongtian Real Estate in the city were closed yesterday after its owner Jiang Fei could not be found Tuesday. Zhongtian’s offices in Chengdu and Shanghai will halt operations today.

The Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau began to investigate the case yesterday after receiving reports from the company’s debtors.

Zhongtian’s headquarters at Tian’an International Building in Luohu District was closed Tuesday. Many debtors waited outside after learning Jiang might have fled with their money.

“I gave 50,000 yuan as deposit to the company for an apartment in Nanshan District,” said a man surnamed Tang.

Another man claimed he had paid 800,000 yuan to the company as deposit for an apartment.

“There is 40 million yuan in the company’s bank account, and Jiang might run away with that money,” a man surnamed Qu, who claimed to be a shareholder of the company, was quoted by the Southern Metropolis Daily as saying yesterday.

Jiang might have absconded Monday, according to an employee of the company.

On Tuesday Zhongtian’s offices received a notice from the management, saying all employees would be dismissed, according to an employee only identified as Zhang.

Zhang said he had not be paid for two months due to the decline in the number of property transactions in the past few months.

“The incident has exposed loopholes of property agencies in money monitoring,”said Li Yaozhi, general manager of Centline Shenzhen Property Agency, adding the incident would further damage the credibility of property agents.

“At the beginning of the year, the land administration had required property agencies to deposit money for monitoring, but some companies used the deposits from buyers for operations of their company, especially after this August when the transactions slackened” said Li.

“The fast expansion of the company was the reason for its bankcruptcy,” said Guo Jianbo, president of Inland China Real Estate. With the real estate having boomed in the past two years, Zhongtian used deposits from buyers to invest in other projects, Guo said. But when the real estate business slowed down, the company landed in trouble.

Zhongtian was established in 2003 in Shenzhen. By the end of 2006, the company had more than 180 offices covering major Chinese cities with more than 2,000 employees.

(Han Ximin)