Four people were imprisoned in south China's island province of
Hainan for blackmailing a local official by using false
journalistic identities.
Lin Minghao, Huang Jin, Zhuang Shuai and Chen Jieyong, were
given jail terms of three to eight years by a local court in
Sanya.
The four men, claiming to be reporters from China Legal News
magazine, blackmailed 100,000 yuan (US$13,300) from an official
surnamed Lin in Fenghuang County in return for not reporting on the
unauthorized commercial use of a piece of farmland.
Lin alerted the police and arranged to meet Huang and Zhuang on
July 4 in order to hand over the money. The police were lying in
wait.
The four men are all employees of China Legal News but the
company's magazine was banned from being published in 2004 because
it was registered in Hong Kong and had not been approved by the
authorities, and its employees were involved in cheating and
extortion, according to the General Administration of Press and
Publication.
But after it was removed from the newsstands it registered a
media and advertising company and set up subsidiaries in provinces
around the country. The four defendants were working for its
subsidiary in Hainan.
The court ruled that China Legal News does not have reporting
rights and the four employees were charged with extortion because
they were not accredited journalists and the basic facts in their
report were unverified.
The court also said the four men had extorted another 15,000
yuan (US$2,000) from the administrators of a scenic spot in Baoting
County of Hainan for covering up "irregularities".
(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2007)