According to official media on Friday, a Chinese court in Beijing sentenced Canadian music singer Kris Wu to 13 years in prison after finding him guilty of offenses including rape.
Investigations revealed that Wu Yifan sexually assaulted three women between November 2020 and December 2020, according to the local court in Beijing’s Chaoyang District. According to the court, he was found guilty of both the crime of organizing a group to indulge in sexual promiscuity and rape. According to official media, representatives from the Canadian embassy in China were present at the sentencing. An inquiry for comment from Reuters on Friday was not immediately answered by the Canadian embassy in Beijing.
Details of the case
The celebrity, who was formerly a part of the K-pop group EXO, moved back to China in 2014 to focus on his solo career. Wu was imprisoned on July 31 of last year after being charged in public by an 18-year-old Chinese student of pressuring her and other females, some of whom were younger than 18, into having sex with him. The student claimed to the media at the time that Wu propositioned her with alcohol when she was 17 and then enticed her into having sex.
Additional charges of tax evasion
In July 2018, the court ruled that he had committed the offense of gathering a group to engage in sexual promiscuity. State media said that representatives from Canada’s embassy in Beijing were present at the sentence, but the embassy did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment. According to the tax agency, he was also forced to pay 600 million yuan ($83.77 million) for concealing personal income and other tax-related offenses.
Wu disguised personal income through domestic and overseas linked firms from 2019 to 2020, evading 95 million yuan in taxes, and underpaying taxes by 84 million yuan, according to the authorities. Wu was a brand ambassador for 15 companies at the time of his arrest, including Bulgari, Lancome, Louis Vuitton, and Porsche, all of which cut all relations with him right afterward.
The outcome of the case
Wu would be deported, according to the court, despite the fact that Chinese attorneys claim such deportations usually happen after the conclusion of the sentence.
Chinese tax authorities disclosed on Friday that Canadian rapper and singer Kris Wu Yifan had also been penalized 600 million yuan (US$84 million) for tax cheating, hours after he had been given a 13-year prison term.
The Chinese-Canadian hip-hop singer, 32, was sentenced for rape and “group lewdness” by the Chaoyang District People’s Court in Beijing, and it was decided that after serving his term, he would be deported from China. Following that, Beijing’s local tax officials revealed on their website that Wu had used enterprises in the mainland of China to conceal his personal income and fraudulent statements to avoid paying 95 million yuan ($13.3 million) in taxes between 2019 and 2020. After an examination, the Beijing municipal tax office discovered that Wu had neglected to pay 84 million yuan ($11.7 million) in taxes. It stated that the fine also includes penalties for late payments and missed installments.
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