The High Price of Digging Up Dirt in China

Canadian stock analyst Kun Huang has been locked in a Luoyang, China, jail for more than a year, charged with defaming a Canadian company whose shares trade on the New York and Toronto exchanges. In 2011, a report circulated by Huang's hedge-fund employer alleged that ore samples from a mine run by Silvercorp Metals tested low for silver content.

The researcher is one of hundreds that Chinese media say have been rounded up since May 2012 for helping foreign investors check out U.S.-listed Chinese companies, or for conducting the due diligence required of multinational corporations by their home countries' antibribery laws.
Chinese television recently broadcast the handcuffed image of well-known fraud investigator Peter Humphrey, a Brit accused with his American wife of accessing state records in the course of background checks performed by their Shanghai-based firm, ChinaWhys, on dozens of Chinese businesses -- including Silvercorp (ticker: SVM). 

Investigators like Huang and Humphrey helped expose unflattering evidence on companies listed here via the back-door maneuver known as a "reverse takeover" -- inspiring a wave of short-selling, delistings, and fraud charges by U.S. regulators.
 Source: http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111903533504579095270615168980.html