Five senior judges of a court in Shanghai are being probed after a video showing them patronising alleged prostitutes went viral on Chinese microblog networks.
Shanghai's Higher People's Court launched the probe after a 10-minute video posted on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, showed five judges getting cosy with several young women at a resort in Shanghai's Pudong New Area on June 9.
The hotel's surveillance camera purportedly showed five scantily dressed women entering the rooms of the judges late at night and exiting about half an hour later stuffing money into their bras, state-run Global Times reported.
An unidentified whistle-blower named two of the five judges as Chen Xueming and Zhao Minghua, the court chief and deputy chief judge of the No.1 civil trial court respectively.
The whistle-blower also alleged that Zhao and his family owned at least four properties worth millions of yuan in Shanghai.
"I just want these corrupted judges who ruined my life and family to be brought to justice," he said without disclosing why he was angry with them.
He added that he had received anonymous threatening phone calls but was determined to provide any new evidence to the police to help with their investigation.
Although he refused to say how he acquired the video, he claimed to own two hours of complete footage which would expose the judges.
The high court published said that it was aware of the report and had launched an investigation, in an official announcement yesterday.
As the microblog network spread across China, surpassing over 400 million, several such scandals are coming to light. Previously several highly placed officials lost their jobs and faced investigations over similar videos.
