Billionaire Mark Mobius says he can’t get money out of China

The Billionaire Investor Mark Mobius He told FOX Business that he can’t get his money out of China because of the country’s capital controls, and warned investors to be “very, very careful” when investing in an economy under tight government control.

“I have an account at HSBC in Shanghai. I can’t get my money out. The government is restricting the flow of money out of the country,” Mobius, founder of Mobius Capital Partners, told FOX Business in an interview published on March 2.

“I can’t get them to explain why they are doing this (…) They are putting up all kinds of barriers. They don’t say, ‘No, you can’t get your money out.’ But they say: ‘give us all the records of 20 years of how you made this money’ (…) It’s crazy”.

Mobius comments circulated on the Chinese social network wechat during the weekend.

Mobius led Franklin Templeton Investments’ emerging markets investments for three decades and is known for his bullish view on China. Now, however, he said, “I would be very, very careful” when investing in the country.

“The bottom line is that China is moving in a completely different direction than the one Deng Xiaoping instituted when he started the great reform program,” he said, referring to the former Chinese leader.

“Now you have a government that is taking gold shares in companies all over China. That means they are going to try to control all those companies (…) So I don’t think it’s a very good image when you see that the government is increasingly oriented towards controlling the economy”.

Calling himself “the Indiana Jones of emerging market investing,” Mobius told FOX Business that he is increasing his exposure to alternative markets such as India and Brazil.

Mobius and HSBC could not be reached over the weekend. (Report from the Shanghai newsroom Edited in Spanish by Javier López de Lérida)