Opinion | Corruption trials expose roles of the "white gloves" who manage the ill-gotten gains
A corrupt official needs two things: a mistress, and a facilitator to manage the ill-gotten wealth and money-making opportunities for the family
The innocuous-sounding euphemism "white gloves" generally refers to a middleman or outfit that launders dirty or corrupt money under a seemingly legitimate front - dirty hands concealed by a pair of white gloves.
The expression, coined by the Taiwanese, is catching up fast on the mainland as rampant corruption is exposed at all levels of the bureaucracy.
Indeed, just as there are mistresses behind every corrupt senior official, there is also "a pair of white gloves" in the wings to help their families make their fortunes and manage them.
The recent trials of Bo Xilai, once the mainland's most flamboyant politician, and Liu Zhijun, the former railways minister, shed a rare but interesting spotlight on the crucial role of the white gloves in helping them amass their fortunes and financing their decadent lifestyles.
The pay-off for the white gloves, who are usually smooth-talking businessmen, is the chance to enrich themselves even more fabulously by leveraging ties to powerful politicians and gaining inside information.
In the five-day trial of Bo last month, probably the mainland's most closely watched court case in decades, Xu Ming, an entrepreneur from Dalian (where Bo built his political career) and the alleged white gloves for the Bo family, provided crucial evidence that was expected to put Bo away for a long time.