Albert Yeung Sau Shing, one of Hong Kong’s most flamboyant and criminally linked tycoon has invested in director Oliver Stone’s biopic of U.S. President George W. Bush.

A regular fixture in Canadian and American reports on Asian organized crime, Yeung’s Emperor Motion Pictures joins another Hong Kong company, Global Entertainment Group, among international backers of the movie W.

“I’ve always admired Oliver Stone’s work. I’m very excited to work with him this time,” Emperor chairman Yeung told Hong Kong media.

As part of the deal, Emperor will own the movie’s distribution rights in the mainland, Hong Kong and Macau.

The company declined to say how much it invested in the $30-million movie in which Josh Brolin stars as Bush, Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush and James Cromwell as the senior Bush.

Ellen Burstyn plays Barbara Bush, Thandie Newton portrays Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Jeffrey Wright plays her predecessor, Colin Powell.

Stone has said that the film, which will focus on the life and presidency of Bush, will not be an anti-Bush polemic, but, as he told Daily Variety, “a fair, true portrait of the man.”

“How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?”

W will be Stone’s third film dealing with presidential matters, following Nixon and JFK.

Stone’s films also include the Vietnam sagas Born on the Fourth of July and Platoon, which won four Oscars. He is an outspoken critic of the decision to invade Iraq.

Yeung is one of the Hong Kong media and entertainment industry’s most colourful figures, and has been implicated in a series of high-profile court cases spanning a 20-year period.

He was jailed for nine months in 1981 for attempting to pervert the course of justice, but in 1995 was cleared of criminal intimidation and false imprisonment after all five prosecution witnesses forgot details of offences.

In 2003, Yeung and singer Juno Mak were among 30 arrested in connection with corruption allegations over preferential treatment of “a number of singers, including the promotion of these singers and their hits on a music billboard,” Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said.

Yeung also escaped a botched kidnap attempt in 1989, and owned the racy Eastweek magazine before it was shut down last year after publishing a photograph of a semi-naked actress taken during a kidnapping in 1991.

The businessman, who set up the Emperor record label in 1999, has been credited with the meteoric rise of Cantopop stars including Nicholas Tse and the Twins.

The Emperor Group, a Hong Kong consortium, is involved in real estate, financial services, watches and jewelry, publishing and other businesses, some of which have direct connections in Canada.

Described as a small, lively  man, with a boyish face, Yeung likes to flaunt his wealth.

Reputed for his collection of Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz cars, all with expensive license plates bearing so called “lucky numbers,” Yeung once dropped $1.9 million for a registration plate bearing the number 9.

Since the early ‘90s Yeung has been on the radar of Canadian Asian organized crime investigators. He was among the targets looked at in the controversial Sidewinder report which attempted to study the links between triads, the Chinese government and the Chinese diaspora.