‘Dismissal dress’ love affair scandal takes down state-owned oil company boss who is expelled from Communist Party and removed from public office
- Month-long investigation into illicit affair ends in oil company official being stripped of party membership and removed from all posts
- Woman at centre of ‘dismissal dress-gate’ scandal has contract with state-owned firm terminated
A Chinese official at the centre of the “dismissal dress-gate” scandal has been expelled from the Communist Party of China and removed from all his posts after a month-long investigation.
The scandal began to unfold last month when the now former general manager of an oil company subsidiary was seen walking hand-in-hand with a mysterious woman, who was neither his wife nor daughter, in a busy shopping area of Chengdu in southwest China’s Sichuan province.
A video clip of the pair, taken by a street fashion videographer who posted it on his Douyin account, caught fire on mainland social media when the man was identified as oil company executive, Hu Jiyong.
The woman he was with, surnamed Dong, turned out to be a subordinate at the company.
Such was the viral nature of the video, the pink silk dress Dong was wearing in it topped the search list of China’s e-commerce platform Taobao, with more than 12 million people checking the item, which came to be known as the “dismissal dress”.
More than 4,000 people purchased the garment on the e-commerce platform which is owned by Alibaba, the owner of the South China Morning Post.
