Chinese Retailer Casts Doubt on TV Investigation

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 Quality Report,” became 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 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. 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, according to Caixin. 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.