Ai Weiwei ‘landed with £1m bill’ from Chinese tax office

Chinese artist told he owes 5m yuan in unpaid taxes and will be fined 7m yuan, according to lawyer friend Beijing tax authorities are seeking more than £1m in unpaid taxes and fines from the outspoken Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who was released last week from nearly three months in detention , one of his close friends has said. Ai was released on bail last Wednesday. The Chinese authorities said he confessed to tax evasion and pledged to repay the money owed. His family has denied he evaded any taxes and activists have denounced the accusation as a false premise for detaining Ai, who spoke out against the authoritarian government and its repression of civil liberties. The Beijing local taxation bureau informed Ai that he owed around 5m yuan (£484,000) in unpaid taxes and that he would be fined about 7m yuan (£678,000), said Liu Xiaoyuan, a human rights lawyer based in the Chinese capital. Liu does not legally represent Ai, but has been a friend and supporter for many years. Ai, who has shown his work in London, New York and Berlin, has earned huge sums selling his work at auctions and through galleries. Last year, he filled the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern gallery in London with millions of handmade porcelain sunflower seeds. A 100kg pile of the seeds sold for £349,250 at auction in February. Ai’s mother, Gao Ying, said two tax bureau officials delivered the notice to her son on Monday and asked him to sign it in acknowledgment but he refused. Gao said she was not sure of the specifics in the notice, but that the alleged violations took place over the past decade. “We don’t know anything about these taxes,” she said. “These taxes date back 10 years. Why, at that time, if they really had not paid their taxes, why did they not say anything about it every year?” Ai declined to comment, saying the terms of his bail barred him from doing media interviews. He was the most high-profile target of the government’s nationwide crackdown on bloggers, lawyers and activists aimed at derailing potential democratic uprisings like those in the Middle East and north Africa. When he was released, the Chinese foreign ministry repeated allegations reported earlier by state media that a company linked to Ai, Beijing Fake Cultural Development, had evaded a “huge amount” of taxes and intentionally destroyed accounting documents. Previously, Ai’s wife, Lu Qing, said the company, which handles business aspects of his art career, belonged to her. Calls to the local tax office in Chaoyang district, where Ai’s studio is located, went unanswered on Tuesday. Lu has said he is forbidden to discuss the conditions of his detention and release and is followed by police in plain clothes whenever he leaves the house. Ai’s detention prompted an international outcry among artists, politicians and human rights activists, and western leaders called it a sign of China’s deteriorating human rights situation. His family and supporters say he is being punished for speaking out about the Communist leadership and social problems. Ai Weiwei China guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 28, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.