Twenty one Chinese officials were punished today over the country's biggest sex scandal in which they were allegedly extorted by a criminal ring after they were being featured in a secretly filmed video.
Of the 21 who figured in the sex video, 15 are government officials and six are state-owned enterprises executives in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.
The scandal emerged on Nov 20 last year, when a video featuring Lei Zhengfu, Communist Party chief of Chongqing's Beibei district went viral online.
An investigation was launched and Lei was removed from his post three days later.
According to the statement, the Chongqing Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection plans to expel Lei from the Communist Party of China and dismiss him from public office.
He was transferred to the judicial authorities in January.
Another two senior government officials, former Party boss of Nan'an District Xia Zeliang and former governor of Changshou District Han Shuming, have been transferred to judicial authorities and are under investigation for economic crimes, it said.
The remaining 18 have been given inner-Party warnings, the statement added.
Earlier in January, Zhu Ruifeng, an independent investigative journalist who brought the sex scandal to light, called for the case to be thoroughly investigated after it emerged more officials have been seen in secretly filmed footage.
His call came days after Chongqing authorities announced that 11 officials, almost all of them district-level communist party chiefs, governors and executives of state-owned enterprises, had been removed from their posts for allegedly appearing in sex videos.
Chongqing police found that a criminal ring had hired women to seduce local officials, covertly filmed their sexual acts and used the videos to blackmail them and also as tools of extortion to get government contracts, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
