Who is Edward Gong? A look into the Toronto mayoral candidate’s mysterious background

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This is just an excerpt from The Ezra Levant Show. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Monday - Friday @ 8 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on June 15, 2023.

On last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra was joined by Andy Lee, Rebel's China affairs reporter, to talk about the suspicious connections behind Toronto mayoral candidate, Gong Xiao Hua, AKA Edward Gong.

Ezra talked about the massive amount of advertising Gong has done for his campaign in Toronto, with lawn signs and billboards plastered all over the city. He questioned where Gong got all his money from and asked Rebel News' Chinese affairs correspondent Andy Lee for a breakdown of the candidate's background.

Andy began the lengthy run-down:

So Edward Gong is a Chinese Canadian, he emigrated here in 2002. He set up two media stations, one is called CNTV, that's Canada National Television, and then there's another network called the Canadian National Chinese Television Network. So Edward Gong, he's just fascinating his story. He was best known for attending these pay-for-play fundraisers with Justin Trudeau back in 2016. He's a heavy liberal donor. I believe he's donated almost $7,000+ attending these pay-for-play fundraisers.

So that's sort of when he came into the spotlight. But, we were sort of led to believe that these pay-for-play fundraisers were a passing relationship, right? Like these people just happened to show up at a fundraiser with Justin Trudeau. But when you deserve to dig into the back story, it looks like there were deeper connections, and I did dig into the back story a little bit. And so I found that Edward Gong has been hosting these festivals, and his guest of honor was Justin Trudeau one year. He's also got a website and Justin Trudeau's featured prominently on it.

So Edward ran afoul of law agencies shortly after these meetings with liberal MPs and Justin Trudeau. And he ended up being charged with some very serious allegations— fraud, money laundering, etc. He also had assets forfeited in New Zealand. So he was accused of running a massive pyramid scheme and frauding investors in Canada and in China and elsewhere, out of hundreds of millions of dollars. So this was New Zealand's biggest-ever bust and seizure of the proceeds of crime. It was over $60 million that he forfeited to the New Zealand government.

Ezra commented on the strange situation where Liberal MP Geng Tan acted as an intermediary between Gong and a Chinese Embassy after his charges went to Beijing:

"So a Trudeau MP is going to bat for Edward Gong, including delivering messages to the Chinese embassy. I mean, you raise a good point. What's that got to do with anything if he's in trouble for securities fraud in New Zealand or in the United States or even in Canada? Why does the Chinese government need to get involved? That's weird.