A maverick journalist whistle-blower on Monday accused Li Yapeng, the ex-husband of pop singer superstar Faye Wong, for embezzling donations worth tens of millions yuan from his charity, prompting the actor-turned businessman and his charity to refute the claims.
Guangzhou citizen journalist Zhou Xiaoyun published a long post on his Sina Weibo microblog on Monday, accusing Li’s Smile Angel Foundation of “misallocating at least least 70 million yuan [HK$89 million] worth of charity funds” and “was suspicious of funds embezzlement”.
The Beijing-based charity, founded by Li and Wong in 2006 and named after their daughter who was born with cleft lip, was known for providing free treatments to Chinese children from poor families who are also suffering from such congenital disease.
Referring to the financial records of the charity available to public, Zhou said the charity’s annual expenses over the past few years largely surpassed the costs needed to fund the medical surgeries.
In 2012, for example, he noted that 564 cleft-lip patients benefited from the operations but the total expenses totalled 56 million yuan, according to the financial report. “That will be 99,479 yuan spending on each patient for the operations that other charity in average spending of 5,000 yuan,” Zhou wrote in the post.
The stunning allegation quickly sparked thousands of reposts and eventually prompted the Smile Angel Foundation to issue a statement on its official microblog account within hours, calling Zhou’s allegations “simple and crude”.
In the statement, the foundation said cleft-lip medical treatment only takes up a portion for the expenses. The funds also went to a host of projects and included the financial support of a children’s hospital, it said.