SUNNYVALE, Calif. _ Yahoo, a Yahoo human rights trust and some former Yahoo executives have been accused of mismanaging money that should have been used to support imprisoned Chinese dissidents, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The litigation emerges from the management of a trust that Yahoo established in 2007 that resulted from the settlement of a lawsuit that Chinese dissidents brought against Yahoo over the internet company's role in providing information to the Chinese Communist Party about political dissidents who also were Yahoo customers.
Sunnyvale-based Yahoo agreed to settle the lawsuit by creating the Yahoo Trust to provide humanitarian assistance to Chinese political dissidents imprisoned for exercising their freedom of expression, a trust that Yahoo funded with $17.3 million.
The lawsuit accuses Yahoo, the Yahoo Human Rights Fund Trust, two organizations and some former executives with Yahoo of failing to properly administer the trust and instead using the funds to further their own interests.
"We don't comment on litigation," said Mike Sefanov, a Yahoo spokesman.
The ex-officials of Yahoo or the trust were named as Michael Callahan, Yahoo's former general counsel; and Ronald Bell, Yahoo's former general counsel. Also named as a defendant was the estate of Harry Yu, who died in 2016 and was a trustee of the trust.
"A breathtaking majority of the Yahoo Trust _ upwards of $13 million _ has been systematically and unlawfully depleted in less than 10 years on expenditures having nothing to do with providing humanitarian assistance to imprisoned Chinese dissidents," the lawsuit claimed.
The plaintiffs are residents of China: He Depu, Yang Zili, Li Dawei, Wang Jinbo, Ouyang Yi, Xu Yonghai, Xu Wanping and Yu Ling. All were imprisoned in China for different terms.
The litigation noted the Yahoo internet services connection to the accusations against, and eventual imprisonment of, He.
"The evidence at trial consisted largely of (He Depu) email communications and 'provocative' articles published online or with his signature," the lawsuit stated. "The verdict repeatedly quoted from evidence obtained by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau's Public Information Cyberspace Security Division."
The dissident was imprisoned in 2003 and released in 2011.
"Mr. He is a past and potential future beneficiary of the Yahoo Trust, and was injured by defendants' failure to faithfully administer the Yahoo Trust for the benefit of imprisoned Chinese dissidents, and by their breaches of trust and fiduciary duty," according to the litigation. "Mr. He received less in humanitarian assistance than he would have but for defendants' misconduct."
