Falun Gong's Illicit Publication
Cases Cracked by Chinese Police

Chinese police have cracked three illicit publication cases in which the outlawed Falun Gong organization did 130 million yuan of business and gained 38.86 million yuan in illegal profits.

Government departments concerned pointed out that these illicit activities further prove that Li Hongzhi, founder of Falun Gong, and his Research Society of Falun Dafa, have made fool of Falun Gong practitioners by advocating "truth, kindness and forbearance. " In fact, Li and his society had taken advantage of practitioners ' sincerity to amass an illicit fortune for themselves.

Reliable sources have disclosed that in the 1993-1996 period, Li Hongzhi plotted and arranged the publication of eleven kinds of Falun Gong books in some 2.18 million volumes, gaining a total sales volume of more than 17.44 million yuan.

The fact is that except for small number of books which were distributed through official channels, the great majority of them were illegally sold or distributed through the Falun Gong network.

Liu Guirong, an accountant for Li Hongzhi, confessed that in 1997 she once squared accounts for Li Hongzhi and found a total income of more than 10 million yuan. She gave these accounts to Li who then burned all of them to destroy the evidence of his illicit income and tax evasion.

In 1996, when the illicit income had increased rapidly and Falun Gong books were banned by the government, Li Hongzhi decided that the Research Society of Falun Dafa should not directly deal with the publication of Falun Gong books and the sales of other Falun Gong items, and established new Falun Gong book publishing bases mainly in the cities of Wuhan and Jinan for large-scale underground business operations.

Initial investigations show that Wang Hansheng, board chairman of the Shenshen Group in Wuhan, and his wife Xu Xianglan, head of the general teaching center of Wuhan, under the guidance of Li Hongzhi sold 4.29 million volumes of Falun Gong books, 580,000 related video and audio products, more than 40,000 sets of practitioners' uniforms, and large amounts of other items through illegal channels in 80 cities and counties in 26 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities between July 1996 and April 1999, with total sales topping 91 million yuan and illicit profits reaching 27 million yuan.

In another major case, Yu Changxin, a core member of the Falun Gong cult, authorized Zhu Jiasheng and several other book dealers to publish Falun Gong books. They adopted an illicit means to distribute more than 3.51 million volumes of books in over 40 cities and counties across China, with more than 15 million yuan of sales volume and more than 3.11 million yuan in illicit profits.

In east China's Shandong Province, Li Hongzhi and Yu Changxin arranged for and authorized Xu Jinliang, a major criminal suspect, to publish Falun Gong audio and video products. Latest investigative results show that Xu sold more than 4.3 million such products in more than 70 cities and counties across the country, with total sales volume surpassing 23.65 million yuan and illicit income reaching 8.3 million yuan.

These three cases prove that major organizers of these illicit publication activities are core members of the Falun Gong cult, and Li Hongzhi and his core members amassed large fortunes from these illicit activities.

Taxation departments in Beijing and the provinces of Hubei and Shandong have disclosed that Li Hongzhi and the major organizers of the three illicit publication cases all evaded large amounts in taxes.

Statistics show that while advocating "truth, kindness and forbearance" among Falun Gong practitioners, Wang Hansheng and his collaborators dodged more than 2.93 million yuan in tax payments of all sorts.

Departments concerned indicate that the three illicit publication cases are only the tip of the iceberg. In one of the examples, Xu Yinquan, deputy head of the general teaching center in Jilin Province, northeast China, and his collaborators illegally obtained more than 1.3 million yuan in profits from illicit publication activities, over 200,000 yuan of which went to Li Hongzhi.

Police investigations show that Li Hongzhi and his core members have profiteered from those illicit publication activities, and their prey were Falun Gong practitioners.

(China daily 1999/10/21)