Missing Chinese Actress Reportedly Surfaces

Fan Bingbing has reportedly been released from secret detention
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 4, 2018 12:33 PM CDT
Missing Chinese Actress Reportedly Surfaces
In this May 24, 2017, file photo, Fan Bingbing poses for photographers as she arrives for the screening of the film The Beguiled at the 70th international film festival, Cannes, southern France.   (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)

More than three months after she disappeared from public view, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has resurfaced. Bingbing, China's most famous and highest-paid actress, is best known internationally for her role as Blink in X-Men: Days of Future Past. She had last been spotted July 1; on Wednesday, she was ordered to pay a $130 million fine for tax evasion and other offenses. For the first time since June, she issued a public statement apologizing for wrongdoing, and now it has been revealed that she was released from a secret detention facility about two weeks ago and returned to Beijing, according to sources cited in the South China Morning Post. Sources say Fan was held at a remote "holiday resort" typically used to investigate Chinese officials who are suspected of corruption.

One insider says she was under "residential surveillance at a designated location"—a practice used in China since 2012 that allows anyone suspected of certain crimes to be held for up to six months without access to legal counsel or contact with family. The Post's sources disagree on whether her ordeal is over or whether she will face further questioning, but a senior film executive in Beijing tells the Hollywood Reporter that he and his colleagues have been in touch with Fan since she made her statement and that she is in Beijing. "She has regained her liberty and is in relatively good spirits," according to the executive. It remains unclear whether Fan can afford the penalties; she reportedly has a deadline to pay if she wants to avoid criminal charges and be sent to prison. (More Fan Bingbing stories.)

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