The father of a four-year-old leukaemia patient is threatening to take a fund-raising organisation affiliated with the scandal-plagued Red Cross Society of China to court for allegedly keeping 50,000 yuan (HK$61,000) of charity-auction funds meant to go towards his daughter's medical bills.
'If the Angel Fund does not give me a reasonable answer today, I will, with the help of NGOs and lawyers, lodge a lawsuit against them,' Zhang Shiliang said yesterday.
Zhang, a migrant worker from Hunan, said a man from Beijing he knew through blogging promised last month that he would try to raise 80,000 yuan at a charity auction held through the Angel Fund, a fund-raising agency set up in 2005 under the Chinese Red Cross Foundation, a subsidiary of the Red Cross society.
The man, Li Yidong, said the money would go to Zhang's daughter, Zhang Ziling.'I don't know why Li did it through the Angel Fund, but he promised to reserve the 80,000 yuan for my daughter,' Zhang Shiliang said.
As the pronunciation of his daughter's name was similar to that of Zhang Zilin, who was crowned Miss World in 2007, Li invited the beauty queen to take part in the charity event. She agreed and brought a teapot from her collection to be sold at the auction on July 2.
Li's company bid 80,000 yuan for the teapot, and the beauty queen handed a ceremonial cheque for that amount to be given to Zhang Shiliang and his daughter. However, Zhang said the Angel Fund then sent him a notice that he was entitled to a one-off charity payment of no more than 30,000 yuan.