Two disgraced senior government officials in southern China unknowingly shared the same mistress, who was recently sentenced to six years in jail over bribery charges, according to local media reports.
Xu Qiulin, also known as Xu Xiaowan, is the latest high-profile "public mistress" of corrupt Chinese officials arrested by authorities as part of Beijing's anti-graft campaign, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday.
According to the Post, Xu had affairs and bore children with the local Communist Party heads in Guangdong Province, namely Wang Qingliang in the provincial capital of Guangzhou and Chen Hongping in Jieyang.
Both men, who were embroiled in a scandal spanning the previous four years over charges of accepting bribes and gifts worth millions of yuan, were unaware that they shared the same lover for many years before it was revealed by the authorities, the report said.
Xu was first investigated in a probe into Chen's "violations of Communist Party discipline"--a common euphemism for graft in China--while he was the Party head in Jieyang, before she confessed to police that she also had an affair with Wan.
Wan is still awaiting trial after appearing in court on Dec. 25 the previous year to face charges of accepting bribes valued at more than 100 million yuan.
Chen faced charges in Foshan, Guangdong Province, in April for taking bribes worth 125 million yuan while in office between 2004 and 2011. He is also accused of embezzling 3.5 million yuan of government funds to build himself a large tomb designed around feng shui practices. Chen has denied the charges.
At the time, Xu was in charge of a large construction firm in Jieyang and had children with both men from 2004 to 2008, but managed to keep it a secret from the two.
Xu was recently sentenced to six years in prison for offering bribes and gifts totaling 2.37 million yuan to several local Chinese officials in exchange for a construction project contract.
"I have six children, the youngest only 10 months old . . . I have not seen them for three years and have almost forgotten what they look like," Xu said in her court hearing the past year, adding that the fathers of all her children had been arrested by police.