Charity explains 'missing' money

A charity foundation on children affairs said it will release 68 pages of bank statements to dispel doubts that their operation is involved in money laundering, Beijing News reported on Dec 13.

China Charity Aid Foundation for Children, founded in 2009, released its 2011 financial statements on Nov 15, from which as much as 4.8 billion yuan ($768 million) was missing without detailed records.

Zhou Xiaoyun, who read the statements, raised questions on Dec 10 that the charity was involved with money laundering, which drew huge attention from the public.

In response, the foundation released a statement admitting that it had a decimal point in the wrong place, and a sum of 0.475 billion yuan was wrongly presented as 4.75 billion yuan in their annual financial statements.

But Zhou still has questions on the source of the 475 million yuan, since donations to the foundation in 2011 were about 80 million yuan. Jiang Ying from the foundation said the 475 million yuan was an accumulated number and they had made some short-term investments to support management costs.

Charities in China have faced a crisis of confidence since 2011 when Guo Meimei claimed to be an official at the Red Cross Society of China and detailed her lavish lifestyle on her micro-blog.