Fan Bingbing whistle-blower Cui Yongyuan dismisses Chinese police’s ‘missing’ claim, accuses them of ignoring death threats
TV host Cui Yongyuan attacks Beijing’s public security bureau saying officers in city failed to respond to his reports of intimidation
The Chinese television host whose allegations triggered the Fan Bingbing tax evasion scandal has pooh-poohed Shanghai police’s claim that they were unable to find him and accused Beijing police of disregarding the multiple death threats he claimed to have received.
On Sunday, Cui Yongyuan accused Shanghai police of taking hundreds of thousands of yuan in bribes during their investigation of the Fan case. They responded yesterday by saying Cui could not be reached, which led to reports he had gone missing.
However, the talk show host later dismissed those claims on Weibo – China’s Twitter-like service – asking officers to write to him or get his number from the tax authorities.
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In a fresh post on Wednesday night, Cui, who is known for campaigning against genetically modified food and sparking the tax evasion probe into Fan and the Huayi Brothers Media film studio with which she has worked, accused the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau of dereliction of duty.
He said that officers from Xinyuanli police station in the city’s Chaoyang district had failed to properly respond to his report that he had received death threats from three Weibo users.
His campaigns against GM food and the Fan revelations had also led to personal information about his daughter being made public, he said.
One of the people he accused of intimidating him last month deliberately released his daughter’s name, photograph and the name of the city in which she is studying, he said.
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Except in one case where a man issued a publicly apology for attacking Cui online, saying among other things that the CCTV host was “close to death”, police had disregarded his claims of intimidation and harassment, Cui said.
Despite the frequency of his Weibo posts, many of them are swiftly censored, as was the case with the accusations he made about Shanghai police.
His Weibo post to Beijing police, however, was still online as of 5pm Thursday. In it he said: “I’m under so much pressure that I have been admitted to hospital twice, but I have always obeyed the law, tried to protect my rights via legal means and had confidence in the law.”
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Cui’s latest social media row received a mixed response from other Weibo users.
“In China there are too many people afraid of getting into trouble, and too few with the courage to speak the truth,” one said.
“Why does a legal pursuit have to be put on social media to provide public discussion? This is the question,” asked another.
Cui’s revelations about Fan’s use of dual contracts to defraud the tax authorities led to her being detained and given a bill for 880 million yuan (US$127.6 million) to cover unpaid taxes and fines.
