NY Times: “Lei Zhengfu, a Chinese official who became a symbol of corruption, was convicted of taking bribes and sentenced to 13 years in prison on Friday in a scandal that exposed the sordid deal-making in Communist Party politics.
The conviction of Mr. Lei was the culmination of a fall that began when video images spread on the Internet in November showing him with an 18-year-old woman. The images, and ensuing accusations of graft and extortion, made him a much-mocked exhibit in the newly appointed Communist Party leadership’s efforts to persuade citizens that it was stamping out official graft and depravity, which have stoked deepening public ire.
Mr. Lei was sentenced days after President Xi Jinping made a new call to halt bureaucratic corruption and bribe-taking. A court in Chongqing, the municipality in southwest China where Mr. Lei once worked, dismissed his argument that a payoff of $488,000, or 3 million renminbi, he had arranged through an associate was a legitimate loan, not hush money to keep secret the video showing him with the young woman.
The court said the money amounted to a bribe.
“The sums involved were massive, and the effects were malign,” said the verdict read to Mr. Lei in the courtroom, according to Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency. “This should be sternly punished according to the law.”
China’s leaders have vowed to get rid of corrupt officials, however low or high. Before his dismissal in November, Mr. Lei was the party secretary of Beibei, a district of Chongqing. Critics said the spectacle of his trial did not make up for Mr. Xi’s failure thus far to take down senior officials, despite widespread speculation about corruption investigations in the government and the military involving powerful figures and large amounts of money.”
via Chinese Official Sentenced to 13 Years in Sex Scandal That Was Exposed on Internet – NYTimes.com.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 