Media firm chief says he made stories up
Print Edition
THE man in charge of the Erma media and marketing companies appeared in a Beijing court yesterday on charges of illegal business operations by posting false information online and deleting material detrimental to his clients.
Yang Xiuyu, 41, told Chaoyang District People’s Court he had vowed never to publish fake information or content which crossed a moral line but he had eventually begun to post fabricated news.
“I don’t want to defend myself. The society needs to consist of real information. I had thought I was a very creative planner, but I ignored that any creation has to be real,” he said.
Yang said he would accept whatever penalty the court decided.
Prosecutors said that from 2010 to 2011, Yang asked his staff to delete online information that was detrimental to three of his companies’ clients. These contracts brought in 140,000 yuan (US$22,753), prosecutors said.
In October 2011, Yang was paid 175,000 yuan to promote a painter surnamed An. He told An to dress like a Buddhist monk and made a video to make it appear that “the monk” was having sex with two women on a boat, prosecutors said.
In April 2012, Yang picked a pretty young woman, Yang Zilu, to play a rich girl boasting about her wealth online. He created a Weibo account for her, where it was claimed she flew with a sugar daddy by charter plane to London to go to the Olympic Games, at a cost of 8.88 million yuan. In fact, his company was paid nearly 190,000 yuan by a travel agency to promote an 8.88 million yuan London tour, prosecutors said.
The Erma marketing company also earned nearly 220,200 yuan from a pharmaceutical company to help it delete negative online information, prosecutors said.
Lu Mei, 31, Erma’s account manager, was ordered by Yang to delete the material, prosecutors said. Lu also stood on trial on charges of illegal business operations.
The court is to announce its verdicts later.
On September 9 last year, the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate specified punishments for companies and individuals paid to delete online messages or who posted false information.
If a company’s illegal gross revenue exceeds 150,000 yuan or its illegal gains surpass 50,000 yuan, it would face illegal business operations charges deemed “serious.”
Those involved face up to five years in prison and fines up to five times their illegal gains.
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