China police arrest 230 over pyramid scheme

BEIJING: Chinese police have arrested 230 members of a suspected pyramid scheme, a week after a rare demonstration in Beijing protesting a crackdown on the group.

The scheme, known as Shanxinhui or ‘ philanthropic exchange’, is under investigation and the group’s founder Zhang Tianming, along with several employees, was arrested earlier this month.

But in an unusual display of public disobedience, hundreds of protesters affiliated with the scheme gathered in the capital Beijing last Monday and 67 of them were detained.

Photos and videos on social media showed a large group chanting slogans and holding red banners urging President Xi Jinping to stop the investigation into the group, which they described as a legitimate platform being ‘persecuted’.

Protests of such size are rare in Beijing, where ruling Communist party has little tolerance for public demonstrations and is particularly sensitive to activity in the country’s capital.

On Sunday, the Guangdong public security bureau said on its official social media account that 230 members of the scheme had been arrested, with 142 facing criminal charges.

It added that 55 companies suspected of involvement in the scheme have been put under investigation, and pledged to ‘ maintain the high pressure crackdown’.

Shanxinhui is ‘the Falun Gong of a new era’, one social media user said yesterday, referring to the banned religious group that has been brutally suppressed by the Chinese government for nearly two decades after it staged a major protest in Beijing’s centre. — AFP