A Luxurious House: Evidence of Sudden Wealth

By Xiao Guang

According to a report on November 1, 1999 by Craig Smith, a staff reporter of the Wall Street Journal, Li Hongzhi's wife Li Rui, a Chinese citizen, has realized her "American Dream": At the beginning of 1999, she became the owner of a house measuring 4,600 sq ft near Princeton University in New Jersey in the United States.

The house was bought in the name of Li Rui in May of 1999. Only three weeks before that, over 10,000 of Li Hongzhi's followers had demonstrated outside Zhongnanhai, the seat of the Chinese Government, demanding that the government recognize the "Falun Gong" organization.

However, Li Hongzhi said that the house was a gift from one of his followers, and that he had paid him for it. Smith reported that Li Hongzhi, who now lives in the U.S.A., had announced to the media, through his assistant, that the house in New Jersey had been bought for him by one of his most loyal followers, and that he had not known about this beforehand. Smith reported that the name of this "loyal follower" is John Sun, a lamps manufacturer, who had paid US $ 580,000 for the house. When Sun went through the formalities for purchasing the house, Li Hongzhi was travelling abroad, so he asked Li's wife to sign the purchase contract.

It seems that there are different versions about the ownership of the house. According to Smith's report, both John Sun and Li Hongzhi declared that Li had refused the generous gift and had never lived in the house. John Sun said the property right of the house had been transferred to him in the middle of July. However, the local government's records showed that until August the owner of the house was still Li Rui, Li Hongzhi's wife. John Sun's wife told reporters at her home on Statten Island, New York, that she had never heard of her husband owning any house in New Jersey.

Beginning in May 1999, the house has being constantly renovated. Among the luxurious furnishings, the private swimming pool in the rear garden alone cost US $ 24,000. The people in the neighborhood said that they didn't know who lived in this splendid house, but they often saw a sumptuous car drive in and out and an teenage Asian girl in the garden. In August, a close assistant of Li Hongzhi was seen there.

So, it seems that the house was actually bought by Li Hongzhi and his wife. The problem is: How could they afford to buy it? It cost US $ 580,000 (about RMB 4,796,600 yuan), and they had paid it off. Where did they get so much money?

Smith reported that Li Hongzhi came to United States in 1998 with his wife and daughter. They first lived in an apartment they rented in Flushing, New York. Then in June the same year, Li's wife bought a house for close to US $300,000 in a high-grade residential area in Queens, New York. However, up till 1992, Li Hongzhi's wife had been an ordinary office worker in a small city in Northeast China, with an annual income of less than US $ 500. It is thus obvious that they have other sources of income.

Li Hongzhi uses "Falun Gong" to amass wealth illegally, gaining several million US dollars from his speeches and book sales. Liu Guirong, who was once Li Hongzhi's private accountant, said at the beginning of 1997 that she had checked Li's accounts, and found that he had a total income of more than ten million yuan (about US $ 1,219,512). Later, in order to cover up his illegal income and tax evasion acts, Li Hongzhi burned these accounts personally in his home near Fahua Temple in Beijing.

It has been investigated and verified that in the three major cases of illegal publishing and sales of books, audio-video products and other goods related to "Falun Gong" that took place in Wuhan, Hubei Province, and Jinan, Shandong Province, Li Hongzhi illegally gained more than 38.86 million yuan (about US $ 4,614,269).

Li Hongzhi himself denied that he had amassed wealth by being paid for speeches and selling books to "Falun Gong" followers at high prices. However, the ironclad evidence brooks no denial.

(Compiled by New Star Publishers, Dec., 1999)