Lia Changxing, China's most wanted man, says he will be killed if Canada deports him on Wednesday.

Lia Changxing, China's most wanted man. (CBC)

Lawyers for Lai will be in federal court in Ottawa trying one last time to stop a deportation order against the man accused of smuggling $10 billion worth of goods. 

Lai says he is just a fall guy in China's crackdown on corruption, but Canada's Immigration Department has ruled he is a fugitive and not a refugee. Lai may have built schools and hospitals for the poor, but China says he is guilty of tax evasion and bribery. 

"I am not dealing drugs, or killing people, or stealing, or doing things that puts society in danger," Lai told CBC News through an interpreter. "I am a legitimate businessman." 

Lai says he may have lent officials money that was never repaid, or bought a few people new cars, but he says he never bribed anyone.

"Everybody in China at the time did business the same way that I did. So if I'm breaking the law, so is everyone else."

But authorites say no one moved more goods tax-free than the man known in China as "Mr. Big."

Containers coming into China declared as wood pulp, for instance, would actually be full of luxury cars. Chinese officials says Lai's company was a front for a $10 billion smuggling operation. His headquarters, the government alleges, was a pleasure palace where prostitutes entertained government officials. 

One top customs officer, and even Lai's own brother, testified against him. But his lawyer says their statements were obtained under threat of torture. 

"If Mr. Lai were to go back to China and be tortured then we Canadians would be complicit in that torture and that should not happen," said his lawyer David Matas. 

Canada has received diplomatic assurances that Lai will be spared execution. But Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji has said Lai ought to be executed three times over.  Fourteen people have already been sentenced to death in the smuggling scandal and Lai is convinced he will be killed in prison if Canada deports him.

"I don't think they are going to publicly hit or shoot me," said Lai, "but my brother died in jail. If I die, people outside will not know."  

Lai, who grew up poor and illiterate, built an empire and gambled it all as a budding capitalist in a communist regime.

 "You can't blame me for that," he said. "There is a problem in the system. If this were any other country, I wouldn't be able to get away with it." 

 Lai says he is grateful Canada has let him stay for the last seven years. 

"If I went to some other place, I would have been long dead," he said.   

  

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