'Brit businessman Heywood poisoned with cyanide drops over affair with top Chinese leader's wife'

Beijing, Apr 15 (ANI): British businessman, Neil Heywood, 41, died from cyanide poisoning after allegedly having an affair with a lawyer, Gu Kailai, wife of Bo Xilai, one of the top Communist Party leaders of China, a Chinese website has revealed.

The 62 yr-old party leader's career was brought to a close after the announcement of his suspension and the arrest of his wife on the charges on Heywood's murder, the Daily Mail reports.

Heywood was poisoned last November in a hotel room by Bo's henchman through a lethal dose of potassium cyanide, a poison that kills within minutes in tiny doses.

According to claims, a single teaspoon of potassium cyanide can shut down body cells, rendering victims unconscious in ten to 20 seconds and dead within minutes, leaving the appearance of death by cardiac arrest.

Heywood had reportedly helped Gu spirit nearly 800 million pound worth assets out of China to overseas, The Daily Mail reports.

His alleged affair with Gu came to end after she asked Heywood to swear allegiance to the Bo family and divorce his Chinese-born wife Wang Lulu, who is now reported to be desperate to flee China.

Heywood refused and, fearing for his safety, considered taking wife, son and daughter back to Britain.

He was, subsequently, summoned to a meeting with the Bo family in Chongqing and ended up dead in a hotel room.

Reports said that police chief Wang Lijun, who initially acted on Bo's orders and recorded the reason of death of Heywood as cardiac arrest, later turned the whistleblower and fled to a US consulate.

He confessed that many other police officials were involved and he ordered his officers to record Heywood's death as a heart attack.

Bo had reportedly warned the officers would be imprisoned and tortured if they refused to comply with the former's orders.

Wang Lulu, without giving much thought, agreed to not conduct an autopsy of her usband and have her husband 'quickly cremated' as Gu had suggested.

Heywood's family was originally told he had died of a heart attack triggered by excessive drinking, despite the fact he rarely touched alcohol.

Father-of-two Heywood met Bo when he was mayor of the north-east city of Dalian in the Nineties and became an unlikely confidante, mentoring Bo's 'playboy' son Bo Guagua and helped him get a place at his alma mater, Harrow School.

Heywood's work for the Bo family is believed to have at least partly funded his comfortable lifestyle. Both his children attend British-run Dulwich College in Beijing, where annual fees was about 20,000 pounds per child. (ANI)