Fresh image shows CCP-linked high roller shoulder-to-shoulder with Dutton

He also acted as a casino junket operator for several years and was charged in 2019 with holding a customer at knifepoint to demand $10 million in property, but the charges were dropped and he was paid $250,000 by the Department of Public Prosecutions to cover his legal costs.

In an unrelated civil case in 2020, a court heard that Xie had received a $1.5 million loan from a notorious casino junket operator and Chinese Communist Party influence agent Tom “Chinatown” Zhou, who has been jailed in China over corruption offences. Xie was almost stabbed to death in 2016 as part of a suspected triad Asian crime gang hit.

There is no suggestion Xie himself is a criminal or that the organisation that Xie now chairs is part of the CCP.

Xie has triggered concern within the Chinese community because his organisation, the Australia China Charitable Foundation, has a similar name to a respected not-for-profit group, the Australian Chinese Charity Foundation, founded in 1990 and chaired by Michael Tse, a Sydney medical director.

Xie chairs the Australia China Charitable Foundation, which is run from his home in Galston in the northern suburbs of Sydney and was registered as a charity in 2017 because it claimed it would address social welfare including Indigenous disadvantage.

But the foundation failed to comply with repeated requests from the regulator, the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission (ACNC) to disclose the money raised and the causes he funded and ceased to be registered in November 2022.

The foundation has attracted politicians and business leaders to its events, including a lavish dinner at Sydney Town Hall on January 30, but it did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. Xie could not be reached for comment.

The ACNC told this masthead on Friday that it could not comment on whether it was investigating a charity, but confirmed the Australia China Charitable Foundation was no longer a registered charity because it was a “double defaulter” on financial disclosure.

“This means that it repeatedly failed to meet reporting obligations, despite several requests from the ACNC, and that is why its registration was revoked,” the regulator said.