A Chinese official was indicted on Friday for taking bribes to hide his sex tape with an 18-year-old, in a scandal that cast Lei Zhengfu as the figure of government controversy.
Video stills of the former Communist party official surfaced online last November, showing images of Lei having sexual relations with an unidentified 18-year-old girl. He then doled out a 3 million renminbi (around $488,000) bribe with an associate to keep the video under wraps. In court, Lei insisted that this payoff was not for blackmail, rather, a proper loan. Judges in the southwest municipality of Chongqing dismissed this claim, and Lei was subsequently charged with graft and extortion, according to the New York Times.
"The sums involved were massive, and the effects were malign," the verdict read to Lei in the courtroom said, according to Xinhua. "This should be sternly punished according to the law."
A few days before Lei's sentencing, China's President Xi Jinping made a public statement that bureaucrats in power must purge themselves of scandal and wrongdoing, putting recently-elected Lei in the spotlight as a subject of mockery.
Lei received 13 years in prison and was fired and removed from the Communist Party after stills from a hotel room went viral online, with captions of "Lei, the secretary who accepts sex bribes."
He also must pay a $48,500 fine for his crimes.
Before Lei was dismissed from politics, he served as the party secretary of Beibei, a Chongqing district.
"Lei Zhengfu was not a high-level official," a blogger named Zhu Ruifeng told the New York Times. "I don't see much hope of the party and government really taking on corruption. Each generation of leaders vows to do that, but the results are plain to see. We don't hold much hope."
Others gave sardonic opinions of sympathy on the Internet.
"Lei Zhengfu was given a sentence of 13 years. He was in bed for 12 seconds, which makes one year for each second, with a year to spare," said one user on China's Twitter-like site Weibo.
Lei has not specified whether or not he intends on appealing the verdict, Xinhua reported.
