Party accused of covering up official's lavish lifestyle

A young television anchor who exposed a philandering State Archives Administration official, has accused the Communist Party's General Office, where the man previously worked, of trying to cover up the scandal.

Ji Yingnan, a 25-year-old anchorwoman on the China Travel & Economic Channel, said yesterday the State Archives had passed on a message from the General Office asking her to "seek formal channels" to solve the case, instead of "expanding [negative] influence".

Ji said that exposing her affair with Fan Yue, a deputy director-general of the State Archives' policy and legal affairs office, had been her last option. "It forced me to leap out through the window and try the side door."

She posted details of the affair on her verified Sina Weibo microblog on Friday, saying Fan gave her 10,000 yuan (HK$12,500) daily, and bought her an Audi worth 700,000 yuan in late 2009 and a white Porsche worth more than 1.3 million yuan last summer. The posts were soon removed and she has been banned from microblogging - on Sina and Tencent - since Friday.

Ji said she tried "formal channels", for example, reporting the case to the party committee of the State Archives Administration, the secretariat bureau of the party's General Office and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in the past few months, but had been either blocked by security guards or had her reports ignored.

The Friday post sparked questions on how a mid-level official could fund such a lavish lifestyle.

Ji said that when they met in 2009, Fan told her that he managed an information technology firm in Beijing. She later discovered that he was a civil servant, but was told that he worked in a department that dealt with confidential affairs and was not allowed to tell her more.

State Archives Administration spokesman Guo Siping, who is also Fan's supervisor, told Xinhua that Fan had resigned, but "what the female whistle-blower described was not completely true, even though Fan did have problems", Zhongguowangshi, a Xinhua microblog reported yesterday. The post was later deleted and related report removed from the Xinhuanet.com news portal.

Calls to the State Archives went unanswered yesterday.