BEIJING: China’s Communist chief Xi Jinping has given the go-ahead for a corruption investigation into the former head of the country’s internal security apparatus, the New York Times reported yesterday.
Citing what it described as ‘sources with elite political ties’, the paper said the decision to open the inquiry into Zhou Yongkang was made early this month.
Zhou is a former member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee and one of China’s most powerful politicians of the last decade.
It would be the first time for decades that such a high-ranking figure has been targeted in a formal inquiry.
A senior official visited Zhou at his home to inform him of the move and he and his wife have since been under what the paper described as ‘constant guard’, without saying he had been detained.
The New York Times cited five people including ‘a lawyer with family connections to the party elite’ and ‘the granddaughter of a late leader’. All spoke in return for anonymity due to ‘the risk of recriminations for discussing sensitive politics’, the paper said. — AFP