Whistle-blower implicates Chongqing company boss in sex tape

The man who blew the whistle on a sex scandal that toppled 11 officials in Chongqing says he has new evidence incriminating a top official at a state-owned enterprise in the southwestern municipality and will release it online after verification.

Citizen journalist Zhu Ruifeng said the president of a large state-owned company in Chongqing was the latest executive to be implicated in the scandal. Zhu said he had videos of a person who looked like the executive having sex with a young woman, and offered a cash reward to any member of the public who could provide clear photographs of the man, so that he could verify his identity.

"I need help from the public to fight against those all-powerful but corrupt officials," Zhu said in a phone interview. "I will not give up unless the Chongqing authorities take the right actions to fight corruption."

A staff member at the company involved refused to answer queries yesterday. A Chongqing government spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Zhu said he would consult his lawyers and might file a lawsuit against two Chongqing police officers he accused of visiting his home on Sunday night and banging on his door for three hours, threatening him and his family.

The two men paid a visit to Zhu after he said that some local officials involved in the scandal had not yet been caught and accused local police of a cover-up and destroying evidence.

Zhu uploaded screenshots from explicit video footage in November showing district-level Communist Party official Lei Zhengfu having sex with an 18-year-old woman. He said he uploaded them first because Lei was "easily recognisable".

Lei was fired within days of the screenshots going viral online.

State media announced more details last Thursday, saying 10 other officials had been fired for involvement in the scandal, including the deputy general manager of the company at the centre of Zhu's latest allegation. They said a construction company had hired at least one woman as part of a blackmail scheme to extort favourable deals from officials.

Zhu said a Chongqing police source had told him the developer had spent money and time training young women to secretly record themselves having sex with prominent local officials.

A woman said to be involved in the scandal is also being held by police, Zhu said. Internet users started calling her the "most beautiful woman in China" after word of the honeytrap scheme spread online.

"You did the job that the party's disciplinary watchdog cannot do, you have my full support," one microblogger wrote.

Zhu said earlier that Wang Lijun helped cover up the blackmail scheme when he was Chongqing's police chief.