China has formally arrested former security czar Zhou Yongkang and expelled him from the Communist Party, making him the highest ranking official yet to be investigated for corruption.
“Zhou leaked the Party’s and country’s secrets. He seriously violated self-disciplinary regulations and accepted a large amount of money and properties personally and through his family,” ran a story on the official Xinhua news agency about his arrest.
Mr Zhou, who is in his 70s, was a member of the party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee until 2012, but he has not been seen in public in more than a year since reports of an investigation into his activities surfaced.
Mr Zhou is the highest profile victim of president Xi Jinping’s corruption crackdown and the most senior Communist Party official to be investigated since the Gang of Four, which included the widow of Chairman Mao Zedong, were put on trial in 1980.
“What Zhou did completely deviated from the Party’s nature and mission, and seriously violated Party discipline. His behaviors badly undermined the reputation of the Party, significantly damaged the cause of the Party and the people, and have yielded serious consequences,” ran the statement.
The investigation into Mr Zhou allows Xi Jinping to cement his powerful position as head of the Communist Party, the army and the government.
Mr Xi has pledged to root out graft in China, whether it involves massive wealth accumulated by the powerful “tigers” of the elite or backhanders palmed over to the “flies” at the bottom of the Communist Party.
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP), which is China’s top prosecutor, had opened an investigation into Zhou’s suspected crimes and had decided to arrest him according to the law.
It is not clear whether he will be prosecuted in public or not. The fact that he is accused of leaking state and Communist Party secrets could mean that there is no public trial, unlike the trial of Bo Xilai, which was held in public.
The Xinhua report said Mr Zhou abused his power to help relatives, mistresses and friends make huge profits from operating businesses, resulting in serious losses of state-owned assets.
“Zhou committed adultery with a number of women and traded his power for sex and money,” ran the report.
The announcement came late on Friday, and Xinhua said the decision to expel him was made at a Politburo meeting.
A subsequent report in the People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, outlined the network of people it says were caught up in the corruption investigation.
They included five groups of people - his relatives, his ex-aides, public security officials, colleagues from his period running China National Petroleum Corp. and officials from the province of Sichuan where Mr Zhou was party secretary.
Among those involved are the former vice chairman of the public security ministry and the former head of the Beijing State Security Bureau, People's Daily reported, while at least six of his relatives have also been investigated, including his eldest son, Zhou Bin, his daughter-in-law, a brother and a nephew.
Until the Zhou case, the biggest scalp has been Bo Xilai, the former party boss in Dalian and Chongqing who was purged last year, and is serving a life sentence for corruption and abuse of power, while his wife Gu Kailai sits in jail for murder.
An editorial on the People's Daily website described corruption as a "malignant tumour that had invaded the Party's healthy body."