Group accused of attempting to blackmail Hunan officials with sex tapes
PUBLISHED : Monday, 03 November, 2014, 4:41pm
UPDATED : Monday, 03 November, 2014, 4:58pm
Chris Luo [email protected]
Hunan province will launch a new trial of a sex tape extortion case that allegedly targeted eight officials. Photo: Xinhua
Hunan province will try a group of six people accused of targeting officials with a sex tape blackmail scheme, amid accusations that local police officers also took part in the alleged blackmail.
Investigations into six suspects have concluded and their files were passed to prosecutors last month, The Beijing News reported on Monday.
The four male and two female suspects from Changning are accused of orchestrating sex scandals by seducing local officials into having casual sex and secretly recording the encounters. They allegedly threatened to make public the recordings if the officials did not pay large sums of money.
Having extramarital affairs, though not against the law, constitutes a serious violation of Communist Party disciplinary codes. The official rhetoric describes it as “living a degenerate lifestyle”.
Scrutiny of officials’ personal lives by party officers has become more strict lately in the wake of the extensive anti-corruption campaign. The party’s discipline inspection apparatus has either suspended or sacked at least a dozen senior officials who were found “conducting adultery” or “having sexual relations with multiple women”.
A court in 2011 found the same group blackmailed Changning’s labour bureau chief for 600,000 yuan after luring him into a compromising situation, but only two of the six members were indicted, and both received suspended sentences. Extortion is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, according to Chinese law.
The local discipline inspection committee found this year that the same group had attempted to blackmail seven more officials.
Then in June, police officers in Changning were accused of trying to use the confiscated video footage to blackmail the officials themselves. A number officers were suspended pending the results of investigations.
One official was sacked and detained on suspicion of trying to bribe police after he was allegedly blackmailed.
In recent years, an increasing number of sex scandals, some involving extortion schemes, have exposed corrupt Chinese officials. Many of these cases came to light after incriminating photos were leaked online.
The Chongqing government last year sacked 10 senior officials and managers of state-run companies after they were implicated in a single sex tape that surfaced on the internet.
Also last year, police in Guangxi province busted an extortion ring that had allegedly blackmailed local officials using fake sexually explicit photographs. The criminals attempted to send out 210 blackmail letters, demanding over 45 million yuan, police said.
The illicit practice was reportedly so rampant that officials decided to blur their mug shots on government websites to hinder the blackmailers' work, a decision which drew ridicule from internet users.
