Chinese Australian Jailed for Illegally Providing Int'l Phone ServicesChinese Australian Xie Zhifeng has been sentenced to one year and six months in jail by a Shanghai court for illegally operating international telecommunications services.The Shanghai First Intermediate People's Court also fined Xie one million yuan for allegedly causing a loss of 2.26 million yuan to the state. The court found that Xie applied for the installation of 14 private telephone lines in his own name and that of his relatives between July 1999 and July 2000 and opened an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) on two lines. Xie had been providing switch services for phone calls from Australia with the 14 lines and computer equipment installed at another site, the court said. Xie was also found guilty of providing same switch services between November 1999 and August 2000, and using another 18 phone lines and a Domestic Date Network (DDN) line he rented in the name of a local trade company. The Shanghai Telecommunications Company was alerted last August when they noticed an extraordinarily high international phone bill for numbers at the same registered site. A site inspection led to the discovery of the switch equipment and records of international phone calls in the computer. |
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