Beijing, July 13 (IANS): The identity of the seller of a collection of handwritten notes of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, which went for 704,750 pounds ($903,066) at a London auction, remains unknown.
The notes were written in 1975, a year before Mao's death, to a professor hired to read to the Communist leader. They were sold at Sotheby's in London for 10 times its estimated price, BBC reported.
The buyer was a Chinese collector, according to BBC.
However, Liu Yang, a Beijing-based lawyer specializing in cultural relics who has been working to retrieve relics overseas, told the Global Times newspaper that unless Mao gave the notes to the seller, the auction would be considered illegal.
Liu said the seller should identify the source of the notes.
The notes were written when Lu Di, then a Chinese teacher at Peking University, read to him as his health deteriorated, according to BBC.