6 stand trial over officials' sex video scandal in China

Six people stood trial in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality Thursday for allegedly blackmailing government officials with secretly recorded sex videos. Xiao Ye, Xu Sheqing, Yan Peng, Zhao Hongxia, Tan Linling, and Wang Jianjun, were charged with extortion last month. The prosecution said Xiao and Xu had conspired to lure officials into having sex with women and secretly recorded their encounters in order to blackmail them and to gain profits for their business. In February 2008, Xiao blackmailed Lei Zhengfu, former secretary of Chongqing's Beibei District Committee of the Communist Party of China, for 3 million yuan (489,000 U.S. dollars). Xiao also received 2 million yuan from a person surnamed Zhou for the same reason in September 2009, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors said that the six defendants gained huge profits through organizing and blackmailing and their activities constituted to extortion. Xiao and Xu are believed to be the prime culprits, while the other four were accomplices. The case was not heard in public because it involves personal privacy. The trial will last for two days at the Yubei District People's Court in Chongqing. Lei, who was found to have appeared in a sex video posted online in November and was subsequently removed from his official post, stood trial in the Chongqing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court Wednesday. The court said it would rule on his case at an appropriate time.