The villa in Cannes, France, that was managed by Neil Heywood, a British businessman murdered in China in 2011.Photo: Noemie Bisserbe/The Wall Street Journal

A villa in the south of France was a key link in the 2011 murder of a British businessman by the wife of Bo Xilai, a former Communist Party bigwig. As WSJ's Jeremy Page reports:

But who really owned the Villa Fontaine Saint Georges couldn’t be established in public records during the scandal that resulted in Mr. Bo being jailed for corruption and abuse of power, and his wife, Gu Kailai, being jailed for poisoning Neil Heywood.

Now the leak of documents from a Panamanian law firm has exposed its role in an offshore company through which Ms. Gu and an associate owned the six-bedroom villa in Cannes, according to a group involved in the leak.

The documents also reveal that the ownership structure of the villa—which Mr. Heywood had helped to manage—was altered just two weeks after his murder, according to the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, or ICIJ.

The villa was bought in 2001 for €2.3 million, around $2.62 million at current exchange rates, with funds from Xu Ming, a tycoon from the northeastern city of Dalian, according to evidence presented during Mr. Bo’s trial. Mr. Bo had become close to Mr. Xu while he was mayor of Dalian in the 1990s.