SHANGHAI — Last July, China’s biggest state-run television broadcaster accused a luxury retailer named DaVinci Furniture of passing off low-quality goods from a factory in southern China as premium imports from Italy and other foreign lands.
Now, DaVinci has pointed the cameras and microphones back at the broadcaster, according to a report in current issue of the weekly magazine Caixin. The magazine is regarded as one of the most authoritative business publications in mainland China.
DaVinci says that it has video and audio evidence that the big state broadcaster, China Central Television, known as CCTV, distorted and even fabricated evidence against DaVinci, and that people close to the television program might have tried to extort money from the company.
The CCTV broadcast in July, on the program “Weekly Report on Product Quality,” turned into a public relations fiasco for DaVinci, which was founded in Singapore and had established itself in China as a leading retailer of European brands like Versace and Fendi Casa.
It was also a coup for CCTV, which demonstrated that the official propaganda arm of the Communist Party could also engage in muckraking journalism using hidden cameras.
But according to Caixin, Doris Phua, DaVinci’s chief executive, said that after the initial television allegations against DaVinci last July, she had agreed to wire about $150,000 to the Hong Kong bank account of a middleman whom she said she understood to be acting on behalf of the CCTV journalist involved in the investigative program.
Ms. Phua said the payment had been intended to stop the state broadcaster from continuing to accuse DaVinci, Caixin reported. She also said that the middleman once asked her to pay the CCTV journalist directly. DaVinci said it had reported the incidents to the Chinese police, CCTV executives and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, which regulates the industry.
In audiotapes released on the Web site of Caixin, the person DaVinci contends is the middleman is heard discussing a payment with Ms. Phua by telephone, saying: “Originally, I told you to give it to him directly; you were not willing to do so, so it is an understood thing, right? You did it through me, then it’s nothing to do with him. No one would admit this problem.”
Raymond Wong, executive director of DaVinci, said Tuesday that Ms. Phua had met repeatedly with the middleman and the CCTV journalist, Li Wenxue, after the initial report in July, and that she had been pressured into wiring the $150,000 under threat that more harm would come to the company.
“They were telling us they had much more evidence, and will continue to publish and let our company collapse,” Mr. Wong said. “They have the power to tell the public things, even if they are not true, and so we thought we should pay the money first.”
He said the company believed that the journalist, Mr. Li, was probably acting for his own gain.
Shortly after the Caixin article appeared online and in print Monday, Mr. Li issued a statement calling DaVinci’s allegations “slander.”
A spokesman for CCTV, which is based in Beijing, did not return telephone calls requesting comment Tuesday. The man identified as the middleman also could not be reached for comment.
DaVinci is still feeling the effects of the broadcast and has reported a sharp decline in sales in China. The company has also faced sanctions from regulators and customs officials in Shanghai, who have accused it of falsely labeling items and selling poor-quality products.
The Caixin article, though, has at least temporarily shifted the public focus to the question of whether the news division of China’s biggest state broadcaster might itself have been at fault.
Although mainland Chinese media outlets are obliged to comply with the nation’s strict censorship controls, there have been widespread reports over the years about news outlets engaging in extortion by promising to scrap negative articles in exchange for large cash payments. Many news outlets are also widely believed to accept payments in exchange for favorable coverage.
In some cases, journalists in China — or people pretending to be journalists — have reportedly tried to extort money from coal mine bosses in exchange for not publicizing explosions at illegal mines. The payments are apparently made to cover up the cases, because the Chinese government often takes swift action against the operators of such mines.
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