China tycoon Huang Guangyu charged with insider trading

Huang Guangyu, China's richest man before falling from grace suspected of stock market manipulation, has been charged with insider trading and offering bribes, state media reported.

Huang, founder of GOME Electrical Appliances, will face trial in the Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court, Xinhua news agency said. 

Charges against Huang have long been expected. He was detained in November 2008 when police investigated him for stock market manipulation. 

Little has been heard of the investigation since then, but its net has gradually grown wider, ensnaring government officials and policemen in charge of fighting financial crime. 

The Beijing No. 2 procuratorate, which indicted Huang, was not immediately available for comment. Other unnamed suspects in the case had also been charged, local media said over the weekend.

Charges in China almost always result in convictions, which would mark a sorry end to Huang''s rags-to-riches story.

Ranked first on Hurun''s China Rich List in 2008, Huang, worth $6.3 billion, was raised by a poor family in China''s Guangdong province. He moved to Beijing in his late teens with his brother and set up a home appliances distribution firm with 30,000 yuan ($4,391), and founded GOME in 1987.

GOME Electrical Appliance Holdings has said that Huang was being investigated for suspected economic crimes but that the probe was not related to the group, its assets or funds.

Shares of the company sank and were suspended for seven months when reports first surfaced that Huang was in trouble.

GOME has been trying to move on, changing its logo, appointing a new chairman and selling a nearly 25 percent stake to US private equity firm Bain Capital in a $418 million deal last June.