New | Chinese multimillionaire Chen Guangbiao takes swipe at fraud accusations online
An article alleging fraud surfaced online last year, but only began circulating widely days after Chen’s outlandish bid for the prestigious newspaper.
In a statement published on his Sina Weibo microblog on Tuesday, the multimillionaire issued a rebuke, saying: “If I have been operating [my] business illegally, why would legal and quality supervision departments tolerate that I remain at large? I would have been busted a long time ago.”
“For all the false and defamatory remarks, I will resort to legal measures,” he said. Chen also said he attributed his success to the Communist Party’s “opening up” policy and his honest, law-abiding hard work.
The article, which appeared on an online forum, claimed the illness-detecting machine that earned Chen his first “bucket of gold” was in fact a scam and violated product laws.
If I have been operating [my] business illegally, why would legal and quality supervision departments tolerate that I remain at large?
The machine was sold in the ‘90s by Chen’s first company, Nanjing Jinweili, which manufactured electronic medical equipment. To use the disease detector, patients would clip a wire to their ear, which would send electric pulses through the body, and the potentially sick organs would be shown on a monitor.