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Chinese actress Fan Bingbing at the 2017 Cannes film festival.
- Chinese authorities detained actress Fan Bingbing in a luxury "holiday resort" while they investigated tax evasion allegations against her, the South China Morning Post reported.
- Fan disappeared from the public eye for three months.
- She spoke for the first time since July on Wednesday after she was fined $129 million for signing secret contracts to avoid tax.
Chinese actress Fan Bingbing was held under a luxurious house arrest while authorities investigated her tax evasion case earlier this year, the South China Morning Post reported.
Fan was accused of signing secret movie contracts to avoid paying higher taxes in May. She disappeared from the public eye from early July to early October, with fans being left in the dark as Beijing forbade its state media to report on her.
Tax authorities since found that Fan split her earnings into two contracts - one public and one secret - to avoid paying taxes, the state-run Xinhua News agency reported on Wednesday. The state also ordered her to pay 884 million yuan ($129 million/£99 million), the BBC and Reuters reported, citing Xinhua.
The actress spoke for the first time since July on Wednesday with a social media post admitting to the tax evasion and apologizing to her fans and the Chinese government.
While her whereabouts remain unknown, the South China Morning Post has reported that Fan had secretly detained until two weeks ago, when she was allowed to return to Beijing, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the case.
Ozonfrance/Wikimedia Commons
Fan was reportedly kept in a "holiday resort" in a suburb in the province of Jiangsu. This is a skyline of Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu.
Fan had been kept in a "holiday resort" in a suburb in the coastal province of Jiangsu, whose authorities were investigating her case, the Hong Kong newspaper said.
The South China Morning Post's sources referred to the detention as "residential surveillance at a designated location."
Fan is no longer in detention, but she could still be summoned for further questioning, the paper said.
Authorities have ordered that Fan repay the money within a prescribed time limit, Xinhua reported, without disclosing how long that would be.
Fan could escape criminal charges if she repaid the money in time, Xinhua said. But if she doesn't, tax authorities will transfer her case to public security officials for "handling," the news agency said, without specifying what that would entail.
She was the highest-earning celebrity in China last year, having raked in 300 million yuan, according to Forbes.