Top Chinese actress fined RM516m
BEIJING: Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing took to social media for the first time in months yesterday to apologise to fans and the Communist Party for tax evasion, shortly after news broke that authorities had ordered her to pay nearly US$130 million (RM516 million) in back taxes and fines.
The 36-year-old actress, model and producer has been a household name in China for years and tasted Hollywood success with a role in the 2014 blockbuster XMen: Days of Future Past.
But her once active social media presence went silent in May after allegations that she had evaded taxes on a lucrative movie shoot, charges her studio called “slander”.
She has not been seen in public since.
Chinese tax authorities have now ruled that both Fan and companies controlled by her failed to pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes, the official Xinhua news service reported yesterday.
The report said Fan would have to pay a total of 883 million yuan (RM516 million) in owed taxes, fines and penalties, adding that she would avoid criminal prosecution as long as she met a repayment deadline.
At least one other person implicated in the probe has been detained for further investigation related to concealing and “deliberately destroying” accounting documents.
Fan took to China’s Twitter-like Weibo to acknowledge her wrongs, beg for her supporters’ forgiveness, and apologise to “society, the friends who care about me, the public and the national tax authorities”.
“Without the party and country’s good policies, without the loving attention of the masses, there would be no Fan Bingbing,” she wrote.
Following the investigation into Fan, authorities have declared a wider crackdown on the entertainment industry, Xinhua said.