News reports indicate that Prime Minister Scott Morrison's WeChat account - more likely his China Mainland Weixin account - has been hijacked.

As is often the case in Asia, everything is not always what it seems.

The PMs account appears to be a Weixin account, registered using a China Mainland mobile number. The registrant, a Mr Ji, seems to have been operating the account for the PM, a fairly common practice to circumvent Weixin user rules.

Mr Ji is alleged to have transferred the account (with its 75,000 followers) to Fuzhou 985 Information Technology in breach of Weixin rules. Tencent Weixin doesn't seem to care.

So, it seems it was never PM Morrison's account and he relied on Mr Li operating the account in good faith in accordance with his wishes.

Restrictions on foreigners doing business in Asia often requires the use of corporate structures or nominees to deliver control of an asset - whether a company or a social media account. The use of a bare nominee sits at the riskier end of the asset control spectrum, as PM Morrison seems to have found out.

With a bare nominee arrangement, the foreigner is reliant on the nominee acting in accordance with their wishes (usually for a fee), knowing that legally, in many Asian countries, there is no recourse if the nominee suddenly decides to act as if the asset (in this case, a social media account) is their own property to use or sell.

This issue often arises with shareholdings or land purchases. When things go wrong, the foreigner is unable to bring local court proceedings as they would need to rely on an illegal arrangement to prove their ownership.

Typically, the use of corporate structures with different voting rights delivers control while not offending local foreign ownership legislation which often focuses on shareholding percentages, and not control, as the determining factor.

However, this is less useful with social media accounts where a local phone number is required for registering the account. Key in these circumstances would be control of the phone number.

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