BEIJING -- China's latest anti-graft investigation is raising questions about the future of the former president's top aide, whose political ascent was hurt by a scandal involving his alleged cover-up of his son's death in a speeding Ferrari.
The Communist Party's anti-graft watchdog said in a brief statement late Thursday that a vice chairman of Shanxi province's political advisory body, Ling Zhengce, was under investigation for "serious" violations.
The party made no mention of the official's brother, Ling Jihua, a key aide to former President Hu Jintao and the father of the young man in the Ferrari scandal. Then on Friday a commentary about the case by an official news agency hinted that Ling Jihua might also be implicated -- though the commentary was swiftly deleted by government censors.
In the lead-up to a generational hand-over of power in 2012, Ling Jihua had appeared destined for a seat in the party's Politburo, a council of top leaders.
But then his son crashed a Ferrari in Beijing in March 2012 during what might have been sex games with two nude or half-dressed women, reports by Hong Kong media said months later, and Ling Jihua was accused of covering up the scandal.
He was later named as the head of the United Front Work Department, a position that removed him from the center of power.
But the party's investigation into his brother has thrust him back into the spotlight, earning him an indirect mention in Friday's commentary in the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
"Seen from the recent cases of officials who have been sacked, some people use blood ties and marriage as a link to form a 'clan of corruption,' to protect one another," the commentary about Ling Zhengce's case said, without mentioning Ling Jihua by name.
A Section on 06/21/2014