The firm also reported a first-half net loss of CNY1.1 billion as revenue slid 82 percent to CNY1 billion. Total liabilities widened 2.7 percent in the period to CNY19 billion.

False Promise

Leshi has also had to warn wide-eyed investors to avoid basing their share-buying decisions on news surrounding Faraday Future, an American electric carmaker also set up by Jia.

Some 234 million Leshi shares traded hands on Aug. 15, more than double its typical trading volume, to push the stock price [SHE:300104] up 7.8 percent to CNY2.35 (34 cents) at the close after a nearly four-hour stint at CNY2.39. The rush of buyers had come shortly after an announcement that Faraday would build a China headquarters and start making five million vehicles a year by 2028.  

Leshi does not own shares in Faraday Future or know anything about its long-term plans, production or sales, it said in a filing to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Aug. 16.

Jia began building the LeEco empire in 2011, and within a few years had a complex network of companies spanning a diverse range of sectors, including automotive, with many cross-owning holdings in their affiliates. That overstretching wound up being the firm's downfall as Jia plunged it into a whirlwind of debt and fled to the United States, where he had kept California-based Faraday a completely separate entity from the conglomerate back home.

The beleaguered entrepreneur has been summoned back to China to pay off debts, which Leshi clocks at CNY7.5 billion (USD1.1 billion), including Jia's personal liability and money owed by non-listed LeEco arms, but he has not returned. Beijing has since added him to a blacklist of debt defaulters.

He has also had his work cut out trying to make it in the States. Faraday was in the pits until white knight investor Evergrande Health bailed it out with a USD2 billion injection that gave it a 45 percent stake in the firm and the chance to final get its first car, the FF91, into mass production.