Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, second from left, with Simon Zhou, second from right, who has been elected as an independent to Ryde council in Sydney, and NSW Labor MP Ernest Wong, right, at a 2016 election press conference. Senator Dastyari was state secretary when Mr Chen donated $200,000 to NSW Labor in November 2011. Mr Chen's second $200,000 donation, in 2013, went to the federal branch. The ALP banned donations from the tobacco industry in 2004, while NSW laws ban funds from any "tobacco industry business entity", which includes "a close associate of a [tobacco] corporation". Wei Wah's website sells three brands of cigarettes imported by ATA. The ALP did not respond to questions. In a brief interview, Mr Chen confirmed that since September 2011, he has been the sole Australian director of ATA International, which supplies several brands of Chinese cigarettes to his company, Wei Wah.

Labor senator Sam Dastyari during the NSW State Labor Conference on Saturday. Credit:Jeremy Piper Mr Chen's tobacco firm, ATA International, is also involved in a mysterious decade-long operation at Sydney's Port Botany involving huge consignments of tobacco exported to Vietnam. The operation bears the hallmarks of international tobacco smuggling, and Fairfax Media has confirmed ATA has attracted intense scrutiny from international law enforcement authorities. Huang Xiangmo (far left) and NSW state MP Ernest Wong at the 2014 unveiling of an Australian Guangdong Chamber of Commerce plaque at NSW Parliament. Credit:Australian Guangdong Chamber of Commerce Neither Mr Chen nor his company has been charged with any smuggling offences. Any such offences are more likely to have been committed in China rather than Australia.

Mr Chen is also a senior member of a Chinese Communist Party lobbying group in Sydney, and former business partner of major political donor Huang Xiangmo, the lobby group's chairman. Simon Zhou, left, with NSW Labor MP Ernest Wong. Fairfax Media and the ABC's Four Corners recently detailed concerns held by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation about Chinese Communist Party-aligned donors exerting political influence, sparking fresh debate about the need for donations reform. The revelations of Mr Chen's tobacco ties come just weeks after Fairfax Media revealed that NSW Labor last year collected more than $100,000 from shadowy Chinese-Australian gold dealers who are under investigation by the tax office for avoiding millions in GST obligations. Cartoon: Matt Golding

The NSW Labor staffer central to this fundraising, Simon Zhou, who is himself a gold dealer, resigned from the ALP amid media scrutiny about his Chinese Communist Party links and the collapse of his company while owing $2.5 million to the Australian Taxation Office. Fairfax can reveal that Mr Zhou has relaunched his political career via a campaign to become independent mayor of Ryde in Sydney. Mr Zhou's campaign is supported by NSW Labor upper house member Ernest Wong. Mr Chen and Mr Huang are among the "whales" of Australia's political donations system – a reference to the Chinese-born businessmen who are pursued by both major political parties and who, according to one party fundraiser, casually "drop big dollars" into party coffers like a casino high roller. Senior figures from the ALP and Coalition concede questions about donors' backgrounds have mostly been kept to a minimum. When they first arrived on the political scene in about 2011, the donation whales were welcomed. The money flowed and the only hiccups were occasional media reports. One such report involved a businessman who in 2016 claimed to know nothing about a donation that had made him NSW Labor's largest individual benefactor.

The background of another donor who gave $850,000 to the ALP and who lives in China still remains a mystery to the party. Labor appears to have known nothing of Mr Chen's tobacco industry involvement. Mr Chen's two $200,000 ALP donations were made at the same time as his business associate Huang Xiangmo made similarly large donations to Labor. ASIO warned the major parties in 2015 about donors aligned to the Chinese Communist Party. Mr Huang, whose application for citizenship has stalled while it is assessed by ASIO, is the president of a Communist Party-aligned lobby group, the Australian Centre for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China. Chen is the group's vice-president. Labor's Chinese community fundraiser, politician Ernest Wong, is an adviser to the lobby group. Mr Chen and Mr Huang gave a total of $350,000 to NSW Labor on the same day: November 11, 2011.

This was 12 days after Labor's Eric Roozendaal was suspended by the party, meaning his parliamentary seat would ultimately need filling. Mr Wong was then tapped to fill Mr Roozendaal's seat. Mr Roozendaal was given a job at Mr Huang's property development firm. The suspected involvement of ATA International in international tobacco smuggling was unknown to the ALP. In a brief interview this week, ATA's operations manager, Andrew Han, confirmed a highly suspicious feature of the firm's tobacco business. The company ships tens of millions of Chinese brand cigarettes from Hong Kong into Sydney, only to shift them into new containers and ship them to Vietnam. This journey takes an estimated 37 days. It would take the company just three days to ship the same cigarettes directly from Hong Kong to Vietnam. This peculiar fact has not escaped the attention of anti-smuggling authorities in Asia and Australia. ATA's cigarette supplier, the Chinese government owned Nanyang Brothers tobacco company in Hong Kong, was implicated in 2004 in a smuggling investigation. It involved the sale of cigarettes to overseas importers who smuggled them back into China's booming cigarette black market.

After briefings by ASIO, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has banned his party from taking any more donations from Mr Huang, who has given more than $1 million to Labor and a similar amount to the Coalition. Peter Chen and his companies, however, are not on the banned donor's list.