Guo Meimei, 20, hit the headlines in July for boasting online about her luxurious lifestyle and claiming she works for the Red Cross Society of China as its general manager.
She uploaded photos of her posing with Maserati and Lamborghini cars, expensive handbags and a palatial villa. Since then, she has become the hottest topic on the country's major micro-blog website, Weibo.com.
Guo's rumoured 'boyfriend', Wang Jun, was also reported to have resigned from the board of directors of a company that has ties to China's Red Cross Society.
In the television interview, "Decoding Finance", Guo explains she is not the 'business general manager' of Red Cross and that it was a misunderstanding.
According to her, Wang is her godfather and had set up a company called Zhong Hong Bo Ai, or China Red Cross Bo'ai Asset Management - a subsidiary that has ties with the Commercial Red Cross.
She claimed that her godfather and business partners told her to work for the new company.
"I said: 'Okay, but if it's anything below general manager level' - I was joking - 'I won't do it.' They said, 'Then we'll let you be general manager.' Actually they were just placating me like a child, and I didn't really believe them," explained Guo.
She said that 'vanity and competitiveness' had led her to change her job title in Weibo from singer and actress to China Red Cross Business General Manager.
Guo also claimed that she did not know that the name of the company was Zhong Hong bo Ai and only knew that it was 'China-something Red-something', so she changed it to China Red Cross.
In the interview, Guo said she had questioned herself whether she could be a general manager at such a young age and Wang replied: "If you don't know, then learn."
When asked who is this godfather of hers, Guo replied that he is not the Wang Jun of Red Cross as what netizens have been saying online. She said that she saw some reports saying that it could have been a vice-chairman in the Red Cross who shares the same name as her godfather.
"My godfather is from Shenzhen. He's a businessman. I think he's a real estate investor or something," said Guo.
One of the pictures that caused outrage was of Guo posing in front of a Maserati, leading to netizens claiming that she owns a Lamborghini as well.
Guo explained in the interview that one of her cars is a Maserati but the other one is a Mini Cooper which her mother had given her on her 18th birthday.
In July, secretary-general of the Red Cross Society of China, Wang Rupeng, said the society had suffered because this case had become a way for the public to express its hatred of the rich.
He said that it was unfair to the Red Cross as they had nothing to do with Guo.
At the height of the scandal, some netizens said they would never donate to the Red Cross again.
Experts say the anger caused by this case is a result of long-held distrust of the society's allocation of funds and its opaque operations.
In a recent scandal about the misuse of donations, the society was found to have overspent 4.2 million yuan (S$793,000), exceeding by 34 per cent the accepted budget, on equipment procurement in December 2009, according to a report released by the National Audit Office on the implementation of the government's budget.
The reputation of Red Cross Society was already tainted in April when a picture of an invoice was uploaded on the Internet that claimed to show that the Luwan branch of the Red Cross Society of China in Shanghai had spent 9,859 yuan ($1,900) on a meal. The bill meant each seat at the table cost more than 500 yuan.
source : asiaone
