BEIJING, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- At least 11 Communist Party members and executives of state-run companies may be charged for their involvement in a sex ring scandal, Chinese officials say.
News of the sex-and-blackmail scheme leaked late last year, but its details were published Friday by the state-run news agency, The New York Times reported Saturday.
Lei Zhengfu is the most notable person taken down so far by the scandal. The middle-aged district party chief was secretly filmed having sex in 2006 with a young woman in a hotel room. The video was leaked online in November.
Ten other officials, five of them executives in state-owned enterprises, who were victimized in the scandal have been removed from their jobs.
The scheme was masterminded by a man named Xiao Ye, published reports said. Xiao gave a group of three women the names of Chongqing officials to contact and lure into bed.
The men were videotaped having sex with the women and then blackmailed under threat of the video's release.
It isn't known what the blackmailers demanded from their victims.
The ring was first investigated in 2008, but the results were buried by Bo Xilai, the Chongqing party chief at the time, and Wang Lijun, his police chief. Both men have since been removed from office after Bo's wife was accused in the death of a British business executive.
