CHINESE MONK-EY BUSINESS:
Instant karma’s gonna get you

JIANGXI, China — Chinese police, disguised as tourists visiting a mountain temple, have arrested a suspected embezzler dressed up as a monk, state media said.

Chen Boshi, a manager in the eastern province of Jiangxi, was suspected of embezzling $126,500 from his power company and fled to the temple in the neighboring province of Hubei last October, Xinhua news agency said Monday.

After a tip-off, police searched several temples in the Henggang Mountain area and “noticed a monk in his 40s wearing a cassock and glasses, walking away on a mountain path with a string of beads in his hand,” Xinhua said.

An officer approached him and pretended to be lost, asking the way. Chen’s response was to try to run away into the surrounding forest, it said.

He had eight ATM cards on him when he was eventually caught, Xinhua said.

Buddhism is the largest religion in China, with about 100 million followers. There has been a boom of Buddhist temples since the 1980s after decades of suppression by the atheist Communist Party, which took power in 1949.
(REUTERS, 10.17.06)