A police officer has been sentenced to a year in jail for opening a brothel with the intent of arresting clients and profiting from fining them.
Last Thursday, Nanjing's Xuehuatai People's Court found Gao Mingguang, a deputy officer of Shuishang patrol station, guilty of abuse of power. According to the Beijing Youth Daily, Gao accepted his friend Xu Xiaolong's suggestion to set up a brothel. He invested more than 6,000 yuan (HK$5,650) of the station's money into the establishment, called the Old Place Hotel. Xu recruited an unemployed pimp named Li Guohua to manage the brothel and report on clients to the police.
Within three months of opening in May last year, Gao's station collected more than 80,000 yuan in fines. Plain-clothed officers were posted at the brothel and would appear each time a client finished having sex.
The nearby Kongzhen police station learned about the brothel and arrested the prostitutes. The courts sentenced Li to one year of re-education through labour.
Gao was arrested in January.
