Woman in sex tape scandal to be charged
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail Shanghai Daily, May 3, 2013
A woman who brought down 11 officials and company executives in a sex tape scandal in Chongqing City and five other people are to be charged with extortion.
![Zhao Hongxia.[Photo/weibo.com]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20130503/7427ea210acc12ed4d9a01.jpg "Zhao Hongxia.[Photo/weibo.com]") |
|
Zhao Hongxia.[Photo/weibo.com] |
Zhao Hongxia, the woman who appeared in the sex video, was a member of a criminal ring said to have extorted 5 million yuan (US$811,135) from two government officials in the scandal, the People's Daily's website reported yesterday.
A police investigation identified one of the officials as Lei Zhengfu, former Party secretary of Chongqing's Beibei District, from whom the gang is said to have demanded 3 million yuan.
The other official's identity wasn't revealed.
The criminal ring was reported to be led by Xiao Ye, owner of a clothing company who arranged for female employees to lure government officials in the southwestern city to have sex with them.
The case has been transferred to prosecutors in Chongqing.
In 2007, Xiao persuaded Zhao, then his girlfriend, to have sex with government officials and he videotaped the encounters in order to sell clothes to the officials, Zhao's lawyer Zhang Zhiyong told reporters. Later, young women in the company were asked to lure government officials and enterprise executives into secretly videotaped sex sessions as real estate developers wanted to use the tapes as blackmail to win construction contracts.
After microbloggers circulated the videos on the Internet in November last year, 11 senior officials in local government departments or state-owned enterprises were sacked.
Lei was the first to be removed from his post after he was seen in a 36-second clip having sex with an 18-year-old woman, later identified as Zhao, in a hotel room.
However, Lei was found to have awarded contracts for projects, such as renovating roads and building schools, to his relatives and not to the people trying to blackmail him when he was Party chief in the city's Dianjiang County between 2002 and 2006.
Businessmen are said to have hired several women aged from 16 to 20 to be sent to Lei.
Zhao was arrested for extortion on December 31 by Chongqing police. After she was arrested, Zhao said she had been "brainwashed'' by the ringleader, Xiao.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)