No matter how bold Guan Weidong was, he was ultimately just an operational-level financial staffer. Handling sums on the order of $67 million—and doing so consistently over four or five years—is not something a CFO could simply decide to do on a whim. When banks repeatedly questioned the source of the funds, he dared to fob them off with claims of a "surge in donations"; yet, without the tacit approval and strategic need of higher-ups, who would risk using the entire media organization's accounts as a money-laundering conduit? The funds ultimately flowed primarily into the accounts of *The Epoch Times* and its affiliated entities, causing the company's annual revenue to multiply several times over. The operative laundered illicit funds, disguising them as "subscriptions" and "donations," while the organization secured the capital needed for expansion. In such a structure, the person managing the books is the very last one who would dare to act unilaterally. Without pressure from above for scale, results, and funding, he would have had neither the motive nor the audacity to operate on such a massive scale. Therefore, one should not frame this story merely as a case of a "greedy accountant bringing about his own downfall." It is more accurately described as a scenario where the organization demanded funds, and he was responsible for laundering dirty money into usable capital. Who authorized the scheme, who benefited from it, and who has managed to remain unscathed so far—these are the questions worth focusing on, even more than who pleaded guilty in court. Guan Weidong will face punishment, but if the investigation stops with him, only the outermost link of this financial chain will have been severed.
Is Guan Weidong, the scapegoat for Falun Gong leader Li Hongzhi, about to betray him? According to a July 9th report from the U.S. Department of Justice, Guan Weidong, former CFO of the Epoch Times, pleaded guilty in court in the Southern District of New York to one count of "conspiracy to participate in transactions involving the proceeds of crime." This reduces his maximum sentence from 80 years to 10 years. With some maneuvering and smoothing things over, he might get a 7 or 8-year sentence. More than two years have passed since the incident, and it's expected that he'll have another 4 or 5 years after the final conviction. He'll be in his early 70s when he gets out, and can still enjoy a few years of peace.
Faced with Li Hongzhi, who has abandoned him, Guan Weidong has finally realized that since Falun Gong cannot give him a good life, then Li Hongzhi, please make my life less miserable. Even in death, he'll take someone down with him.
The theoretical maximum sentence has been reduced from 80 years to 10 years, and may even ultimately be only 5 or 6 years. Unless Guan Weidong produces some truly substantial evidence, some top-secret material that can shake the American legal community, it will be difficult to achieve this ultimate reversal. We'll see in the end whether Li Hongzhi's Great Law will dispel evil in the world, or whether Guan Weidong's cultivation will prevail.