The Fall of Bo Xilai

[BilLing]

CQ is nervous...and a bit scared maybe 2

[Randy W]

So where has this idiot (the one who wrote the article) been for the past 5000 years?

 

Party May Be Long-Term Loser in Chinese Scandal

 

 

“This has got to be shocking to the people of China,” he said. “I think the party has lost a lot of credibility.”

 

. . .

 

“It’s not about ideological disputes. It’s not about Bo’s personality or his ego or his ambition. It’s about the very legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Li said. “People will ask, ‘How can it be possible that a soon-to-be top leader of the country could be involved in a murder?’ How the system could produce this kind of crisis is a wake-up call.”

 

The Communist Party will all of a sudden have to explain the existence of corruption within the party?

[david_dawei]

Western journalism is a joke at times.... and pathetic when the talk of other country issues they have no awareness of.

 

Bo Xi Lai has made a name for himself in Dalian, Liaoning, and Chongqing. In my last trip to china we were in Chongqing and heard lots of praise for his efforts. The people in these areas generally viewed him favorably since he was striking hard at crime and gangs. This 'black' campaign was only slightly awkward due to the 'red' campaign and cultural revolution slogan songs. The higher ups did state any return to that period would be not welcomed and some saw that as a sign they disagreed with Bo's approach. But chinese full well know that china is a country where bribe, scandal, and corruption are everyday events; The average citizen engages in it to some degree as well.

 

I am only surprised that Bo is getting most of the heat and not his henchman Wang Lijun who also made a name for himself in Liaoning. Bo may of had a black and red campaign but Wang was the enforcer. Wang grossly mis-calculated his asylum attempt and 'hoisted his own petard' in the doing.

 

Recently my wife was reading some online exchanges about Bo and was surprised at how people were villifying him. She asked very simply: Please just explain EXACTLY what Bo did ? Nobody was able to comment after that. Soon after, her post was removed.

[knloregon]

Hey Randy,

 

Glad to see you are availing yourself of the WSJ Asian blogs-----particularly liked the one you posted several days ago----the (WSJ) interview between reporter Tom Orlik with Boston Univ's China watcher Joseph Fewsmith. The conclusion:

 

------------------------

 

" Does this have implications for the wives and families of other leaders?

 

Murder is of a different order of magnitude to petty corruption and dodgy business deals. I don’t think it will be open season on leaders’ wives and families."

 

So this does go to the heart of the issues you and David raise--- the citizens of China aren't unfamiliar with political corruption, but murder crosses a line in the leadership. IMHO, it would here in the US as well. Good (fictional) movie on that subject, sort of on line with the Bo scandal: "The Pelican brief"

[BilLing]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9205250/Neil-Heywood-poisoned-by-cyanide-drops-in-China.html

[Beachey]

This story is becoming a pretty good fiction novel, sad that it appears to be actually true.

[knloregon]

 

Gu Kailai gets suspended death sentence for murder

By GILLIAN WONG | Associated Press – 51 mins ago

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Associated Press/CCTV via APTN, File - FILE - In this Aug. 9, 2012 file video image taken from CCTV, Gu Kailai, center, the wife of disgraced politician Bo Xilai, stands during her trial in the Hefei Intermediate …more

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CORRECTS THE TITLE OF HE - He Zhengsheng, …

HEFEI, China (AP) — The wife of a disgraced Chinese politician was given a suspended death sentence Monday after confessing to killing a British businessman by poisoning him with cyanide in a case that rocked the country's top political leadership.

A suspended sentence is usually commuted to life in prison after several years.

Sentenced along with Gu Kailai was a family aide who was given nine years' imprisonment for his involvement in the murder of Neil Heywood, a former family associate, said He Zhengsheng, a lawyer for the Heywood family who attended the sentencing in this eastern China city.

The sentencing closes one chapter of China's biggest political crisis in two decades, but also leaves open questions over the fate of Gu's husband, Bo Xilai, who was dismissed in March as the powerful Communist Party boss of the major city of Chongqing.

His dismissal and his wife's murder trial come at a sensitive time in China, with party leaders handing over power soon to a younger generation. At one time Bo was considered a candidate for a top position.

The lawyer He said he had to discuss the verdict with the Heywood family and did not know if they would lodge an appeal.

"We respect the court's ruling today. Thank you all for your concern," He said.

State media say Gu confessed to intentional homicide at a one-day trial held here Aug. 9 under heavy guard. The media reports — the court has been closed to international media — say she and Heywood had a dispute over money and Heywood allegedly threatened her son.

Gu was accused of luring the victim to a Chongqing hotel, getting him drunk and then pouring cyanide into his mouth.

The family aide, Zhang Xiaojun, also confessed after being charged as an accessory. He had been expected to get a lighter sentence as state media reported from the trial that Gu planned the murder.

Security was tight outside the court on Monday. Police officers stood guard around the building. At least a half dozen SWAT police vans were parked on each corner, some of them carrying plainclothes security. The main road in front of the entrance was blocked by traffic cones.

Any ruling in the Gu case would have been politically delicate, and Chinese leaders may have decided to impose a lengthy prison term instead of death for fear that a more severe penalty might stir outrage or make Gu look like a scapegoat for her husband's misdeeds, political and legal analysts say. The party says Bo was removed due to unspecified violations.

Cheng Li, an expert in Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the verdict was fair.

"My sense is that the Chinese public, including the legal profession, the majority will think it is well deserved," he said.

Li said the ruling against Gu will set expectations for Bo to be dealt with severely.

"If Bo does not get put through the legal process in the next few months, Gu will be seen as a scapegoat," he said.

The British Embassy, which had consular officials attend the trial, issued a statement Monday saying it welcomed the fact China had tried those it had identified as responsible.

The statement said Britain had told China it "wanted to see the trials in this case conform to international human rights standards and for the death penalty not to be applied."

Gu's arrest and the ouster of her husband sparked the biggest political turbulence in China since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989.

 

 

 

[knloregon]

Meanwhile, no official policy from the standing committee ....

[knloregon]

Cop at center of China scandal took walk on the wild side

By Chris Buckley and Benjamin Kang Lim | Reuters – 3 hrs ago

 

 

BEIJING (Reuters) - Former police chief Wang Lijun, at the heart of China's biggest political scandal in decades, was known for his wild and flamboyant behaviour, with a final, dramatic act blowing the story wide open.

Wang, a self-styled crusader against organised crime in the vast southwestern municipality of Chongqing, stood trial on Tuesday for attempted defection, bribe-taking and illegal surveillance. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

Wang, 52, was an ally of the city's Communist Party boss, Bo Xilai, who once had ambitions to join China's leadership team but whose career now lies in ruins. Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, was last month handed down a suspended death sentence for murdering British businessman Neil Heywood last year.

On February 6, Wang fled to a U.S. consulate in an apparent asylum attempt after he confronted Bo, sources say, with evidence implicating Gu in the death of Heywood, once a friend of the Bo family.

Wang spent about 24 hours inside the consulate before being collected by Chinese central government authorities.

The rupture in his relations with Bo hastened the end of the career of a police officer whose methods in Chongqing, China's biggest municipality, were decried by critics as brutal.

Wang was also eccentric: sources said he sometimes did his own post mortems, boasted of being an FBI agent under an exchange programme and of being kidnapped by the Italian mafia.

With Bo and Wang out of power, sources close to officials in Chongqing and Beijing provided details about the man who served at Bo's side in a widely publicized drive to sweep the city streets of triad gangs. They declined to be identified owing to the sensitivities of the scandal.

State media for years hailed the tens of thousands of arrests, the breakup of gangs and the exposure of corrupt police and officials, a campaign that helped build Bo's popular support.

Even by the standards of Chinese police, Wang was known as an aggressive officer. He built his reputation in the northeast province of Liaoning, where Bo was governor in the early 2000s.

Wang, an ethnic Mongolian, boxed as a teen, served in the People's Liberation Army for three years and worked as a forestry official before becoming a policeman in 1984.

His crime crackdown in the northeast town of Tieling won him national acclaim. Zhou Lijun, a screenwriter, spent 10 days with Wang in Tieling in 1996 while working on a screenplay for a TV series about his exploits called "Iron Blooded Police Spirits".

According to Zhou's account in a Chinese newspaper, Wang had a flair for the dramatic. He would drive to crime scenes in a Mitsubishi jeep modified to carry a double rack of lights on its roof so the locals would know "Chief Wang" was on the case.

On arrival, he would leap atop the car, draw his gun and fire shots in the air. On a night raid of hair salons thought to be fronts for prostitution, Wang rushed into one and threw a young man with dyed yellow hair to the ground.

After a police search for evidence yielded nothing, he told them to take the youth to the police station, saying, "A man with hair like that can't be any good."

I'VE GOT A JOB FOR YOU

Bo brought in Wang to lead a crackdown on organised crime in Chongqing after he became the city's Communist Party chief in 2007. The two men became close, said a source in Chongqing with access to city officials.

"The anti-organised crime campaign was like a two-man skit," said the source. "But then they made the anti-crime campaign so complicated and turned it into a campaign, a movement, that was politicized and expanded, and then there were so many erroneous cases and cases of torture," the source said.

Since the downfall of Bo and Wang, several people who were targets of that campaign have come forward with stories of intimidation, torture and forced confession.

Tales of yet more eccentricities emerged.

Wang would turn up at police stations deep in the night to catch officers sleeping, bawl them out and then storm out, said a Chinese businessman who met Wang several times at city functions. He also demanded continuous supplies of fresh flowers and towels, said another source with access to city officials.

A former colleague of Wang's in northeast China said he would sometimes perform the autopsies on executed convicts himself because he claimed he wanted to see if "their hearts were black or red".

As Wang's crime crackdown grew, the campaign created enemies in the rank and file, as well as in leadership circles.

Wang's dragnet led to the city's former justice chief and deputy police chief, Wen Qiang, being executed in 2010 for protecting gangs, accepting bribes, rape and property scams. Wang also jailed dozens of policemen and defense lawyers in the name of cracking down on organised crime.

State media said he wore a bullet-proof vest after gangs put out a hit order on him.

More threatening was scrutiny from on high. Central government anti-graft investigators in 2011 began looking into accusations he accepted bribes from and promoted a subordinate when he was police chief of Tieling from 2000 to 2003, several sources said. Wang became anxious and sought help.

According to accounts previously reported by Reuters, Wang feared that Bo, keen to preserve his chances for promotion, would abandon him after authorities began probing Wang's past.

Wang was extensively involved in bugging and surveillance using sophisticated equipment acquired as part of Chongqing's campaign against organised crime, and also used those capabilities to monitor Bo and those around him, said a source in Beijing with close ties to officials.

Late last year, problems with the Heywood case surfaced. Wang learnt that some of his officers were refusing to sign off on the police report, which said he had died of natural causes.

By January Wang had set up one of the special case teams that had come to symbolize Chongqing's successes - and excesses - over the years.

It determined the death was abnormal and a poisoning. It also determined that Bo's wife was a prime suspect. On or about January 18, Wang took the case to Bo, who reacted angrily before agreeing to a police probe of his wife's role in the murder.

Just days later, Bo abruptly reversed course and stripped Wang of his police chief post. Wang later made his run to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, near Chongqing, where he told American diplomats about the Heywood case, according to the British government which was briefed on this episode.

In Chongqing, word that Wang was taken from the consulate by central government officials was met with relief and even celebration from the rank and file of the city's police, a source said.

"That night, all of the restaurants and karaoke parlors in Chongqing were full - and mostly with police officers."

(Editing by Nick Macfie and Mark Bendeich)

 

 

[dan1984]

Cop at center of China scandal took walk on the wild side

By Chris Buckley and Benjamin Kang Lim | Reuters – 3 hrs ago

 

 

BEIJING (Reuters) - Former police chief Wang Lijun, at the heart of China's biggest political scandal in decades, was known for his wild and flamboyant behaviour, with a final, dramatic act blowing the story wide open.

Wang, a self-styled crusader against organised crime in the vast southwestern municipality of Chongqing, stood trial on Tuesday for attempted defection, bribe-taking and illegal surveillance. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

Wang, 52, was an ally of the city's Communist Party boss, Bo Xilai, who once had ambitions to join China's leadership team but whose career now lies in ruins. Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, was last month handed down a suspended death sentence for murdering British businessman Neil Heywood last year.

On February 6, Wang fled to a U.S. consulate in an apparent asylum attempt after he confronted Bo, sources say, with evidence implicating Gu in the death of Heywood, once a friend of the Bo family.

Wang spent about 24 hours inside the consulate before being collected by Chinese central government authorities.

The rupture in his relations with Bo hastened the end of the career of a police officer whose methods in Chongqing, China's biggest municipality, were decried by critics as brutal.

Wang was also eccentric: sources said he sometimes did his own post mortems, boasted of being an FBI agent under an exchange programme and of being kidnapped by the Italian mafia.

With Bo and Wang out of power, sources close to officials in Chongqing and Beijing provided details about the man who served at Bo's side in a widely publicized drive to sweep the city streets of triad gangs. They declined to be identified owing to the sensitivities of the scandal.

State media for years hailed the tens of thousands of arrests, the breakup of gangs and the exposure of corrupt police and officials, a campaign that helped build Bo's popular support.

Even by the standards of Chinese police, Wang was known as an aggressive officer. He built his reputation in the northeast province of Liaoning, where Bo was governor in the early 2000s.

Wang, an ethnic Mongolian, boxed as a teen, served in the People's Liberation Army for three years and worked as a forestry official before becoming a policeman in 1984.

His crime crackdown in the northeast town of Tieling won him national acclaim. Zhou Lijun, a screenwriter, spent 10 days with Wang in Tieling in 1996 while working on a screenplay for a TV series about his exploits called "Iron Blooded Police Spirits".

According to Zhou's account in a Chinese newspaper, Wang had a flair for the dramatic. He would drive to crime scenes in a Mitsubishi jeep modified to carry a double rack of lights on its roof so the locals would know "Chief Wang" was on the case.

On arrival, he would leap atop the car, draw his gun and fire shots in the air. On a night raid of hair salons thought to be fronts for prostitution, Wang rushed into one and threw a young man with dyed yellow hair to the ground.

After a police search for evidence yielded nothing, he told them to take the youth to the police station, saying, "A man with hair like that can't be any good."

I'VE GOT A JOB FOR YOU

Bo brought in Wang to lead a crackdown on organised crime in Chongqing after he became the city's Communist Party chief in 2007. The two men became close, said a source in Chongqing with access to city officials.

"The anti-organised crime campaign was like a two-man skit," said the source. "But then they made the anti-crime campaign so complicated and turned it into a campaign, a movement, that was politicized and expanded, and then there were so many erroneous cases and cases of torture," the source said.

Since the downfall of Bo and Wang, several people who were targets of that campaign have come forward with stories of intimidation, torture and forced confession.

Tales of yet more eccentricities emerged.

Wang would turn up at police stations deep in the night to catch officers sleeping, bawl them out and then storm out, said a Chinese businessman who met Wang several times at city functions. He also demanded continuous supplies of fresh flowers and towels, said another source with access to city officials.

A former colleague of Wang's in northeast China said he would sometimes perform the autopsies on executed convicts himself because he claimed he wanted to see if "their hearts were black or red".

As Wang's crime crackdown grew, the campaign created enemies in the rank and file, as well as in leadership circles.

Wang's dragnet led to the city's former justice chief and deputy police chief, Wen Qiang, being executed in 2010 for protecting gangs, accepting bribes, rape and property scams. Wang also jailed dozens of policemen and defense lawyers in the name of cracking down on organised crime.

State media said he wore a bullet-proof vest after gangs put out a hit order on him.

More threatening was scrutiny from on high. Central government anti-graft investigators in 2011 began looking into accusations he accepted bribes from and promoted a subordinate when he was police chief of Tieling from 2000 to 2003, several sources said. Wang became anxious and sought help.

According to accounts previously reported by Reuters, Wang feared that Bo, keen to preserve his chances for promotion, would abandon him after authorities began probing Wang's past.

Wang was extensively involved in bugging and surveillance using sophisticated equipment acquired as part of Chongqing's campaign against organised crime, and also used those capabilities to monitor Bo and those around him, said a source in Beijing with close ties to officials.

Late last year, problems with the Heywood case surfaced. Wang learnt that some of his officers were refusing to sign off on the police report, which said he had died of natural causes.

By January Wang had set up one of the special case teams that had come to symbolize Chongqing's successes - and excesses - over the years.

It determined the death was abnormal and a poisoning. It also determined that Bo's wife was a prime suspect. On or about January 18, Wang took the case to Bo, who reacted angrily before agreeing to a police probe of his wife's role in the murder.

Just days later, Bo abruptly reversed course and stripped Wang of his police chief post. Wang later made his run to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, near Chongqing, where he told American diplomats about the Heywood case, according to the British government which was briefed on this episode.

In Chongqing, word that Wang was taken from the consulate by central government officials was met with relief and even celebration from the rank and file of the city's police, a source said.

"That night, all of the restaurants and karaoke parlors in Chongqing were full - and mostly with police officers."

(Editing by Nick Macfie and Mark Bendeich)

 

Insane！

 

 

-- edited triple post of same quote -- dd

Edited September 18, 2012 by david_dawei (see edit history)

[knloregon]

China seals Bo's fate ahead of November 8 leadership congress

By Chris Buckley and Ben Blanchard | Reuters – 4 hrs ago

 

•

• Enlarge Photo

• Reuters/Reuters - China's former Chongqing Municipality Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai looks on during a meeting at the annual session of China's parliament, the National People's Congress, at the Great …

 

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's ruling Communist Party accused disgraced politician Bo Xilai of abusing power, taking huge bribes and other crimes on Friday, sealing the fate of a controversial leader whose fall shook a leadership handover due at a congress from November 8.

The once high-flying Bo now faces a criminal investigation that stemmed from a murder scandal, and will almost certainly be jailed. With the Communist Party congress about six weeks away, further steps in the case could come before then, helping pave the way for a transition of power, experts said.

"Bo Xilai's actions created grave repercussions and did massive harm to the reputation of the party and state, producing an extremely malign effect at home and abroad," the official statement from a party leaders' meeting said, according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency.

Bo's wife Gu Kailai and his former police chief Wang Lijun have already been jailed over the scandal stemming from the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing, where Bo was Communist Party chief.

The official statement carried by Xinhua said that in the murder scandal, Bo "abused his powers of office, committed serious errors and bears a major responsibility".

That charge appears to reflect accusations from Wang's trial that suggested Bo tried to stymie the murder investigation.

Reports that Bo, the "princeling" son of a revolutionary leader, could escape with a light punishment have now been dealt a fatal blow, and accusations of womanizing could further tarnish his reputation in the eyes of Chinese people.

But the few weeks left before the congress will probably not allow time for a trial, said He Weifang, a law professor at Peking University who has closely followed Bo's downfall.

"I think it's quite certain that he won't be able to escape punishment under the criminal law, but the timing makes it unlikely that will happen before the congress," said He.

"I'd guess that he'll get a jail sentence of 20 years or longer. The death penalty is unlikely, although the bribery charges could in theory allow it, if the amount is as huge as they say."

At the congress, Chinese President Hu Jintao will step down as party chief, almost certainly making way for Vice President Xi Jinping to emerge as top leader. Xi is then almost sure to be appointed state president at the annual parliament session, likely in March next year.

WARNING TO HEED EXAMPLE

Bo, 63, has been expelled from the party as well as the elite decision-making Politburo and Central Committee "in view of his errors and culpability in the Wang Lijun incident and the intentional homicide case involving Bogu Kailai", said the party announcement.

Bogu is his wife's official but rarely used surname.

Bo's "grave violations of party discipline" extended back to his time as an official in Dalian city and Liaoning province in northeast China, and as minister of commerce, said the statement from the Politburo.

"Party organizations at all levels must use the case of Bo Xilai's grave disciplinary violations as a negative example," it said.

Bo's son, Bo Guagua, who was a friend of the murdered Heywood, has remained largely silent throughout the fall of his parents. He appears to be still in the United States, after finishing graduate studies at Harvard University.

Since Bo Xilai was ousted in March, he has not been seen in public and has not been allowed to answer the accusations against him. At a news conference days before his removal, Bo rejected as "filth" and "nonsense" the then unspecified allegations against him and his family.

At the same time as announcing the slate of accusations against Bo, the party set the November 8 date for the congress that will unveil the country's new central leadership line-up. Eight is considered a lucky number in China.

The twin announcements will "significantly reduce perceived political and economic risks" and "help end policy paralysis," Ting Lu, China economist Bank of America/Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong said in an emailed research note.

"If anything, this should make markets and the general public somewhat assured that this is not really being delayed too far," Damien Ma, an analyst for the Eurasia Group who follows Chinese politics, said of the November 8 congress date.

LEFTIST SYMPATHISERS CRY FOUL

Bo, 63, was widely seen as pursuing a powerful spot in the new political line-up before his career unraveled after his former police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to a U.S. consulate for more than 24 hours in February and alleged that Bo's wife Gu had poisoned Heywood to death.

After his appointment as party chief of Chongqing in 2007, Bo, a former commerce minister, turned it into a showcase of revolution-inspired "red" culture and his policies for egalitarian, state-led growth. He also won national attention with a crackdown on organized crime.

His brash self-promotion irked some leaders. But his populist ways and crime clean-up were welcomed by many of Chongqing's 30 million residents, as well as others who hoped that Bo could take his leftist-shaded policies nationwide.

His likely trial could still stir that ideological contention. China's party-run courts rarely find in favor of defendants, especially in politically-sensitive cases.

After state television announced the charges against Bo, some leftist sympathizers insisted that he was the innocent victim of a political plot.

"I just still don't believe that Bo has so many problems with corruption," Han Deqiang, a leftist Beijing academic who has supported Bo, told Reuters. "We have to wait and see what else comes out. But I don't think we've been given the truth."

In March, Bo was sacked as Chongqing party boss, and in April he was suspended from the party's Politburo, a powerful decision-making council with two dozen active members.

The latest party statement also said Bo "had or maintained improper sexual relations with multiple women". It added that the investigation discovered clues of other, unspecified crimes.

"We'll have to wait and see what charges are accepted by the prosecutors in any indictment," said Li Zhuang, a Beijing lawyer who was jailed by Bo after raising allegations that Chongqing's anti-crime gang policies involved torture and other unchecked abuses. "The charges could change."

(Additional reporting by Michael Martina and Sally Huang in Beijing, and John Ruwitch in Shanghai; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

 

--------- This will be interesting, been quite a roller coaster to date ---- but seems to me, given these charges, (the bribery) there is still the chance Bo could be sentenced to death-- (perhaps suspended) ---- after the new leadership is installed... On the one hand, it would sound a powerful warning about bribery at the highest levels, and secondly, indicate that the leftists are on the wrong side of the future. I'm not assuming that is what is going to happen--- it would be an extremely reformist move, not course of least resistance.

 

 

[Mick]

I agree Kim - this should be an interesting ride over the remainder of this year. It will also be interesting to see how Bo's fate and that of his wife and Wang Lijun all intertwine as this unfolds. And yes, whatever happens will have a "message sending" element in it.

[amberjack1234]

I agree with Kim and Mick but can the ones that are corrupt just stop or is it like the old days here in America of Al Capones time you just don't quit and get out. Things are changing in China and will continue to do so. It will just take time. I think that most of the old ones wil just have to die off and a new breed come into power. In todays atmosphere of the internet and with smarter people with more capability and insight to watch their leaders it is getting harder and harder for them. I remember one bad guy in the recent past that had gotten his hand caught in the cookie jar as saying that this would never have happened in the old days. He was right too.

 

This is getting kind of political so I won't say anything about the recent Chinese governement sanctioned Japanese protest that I would like to talk about.

 

Larry

[knloregon]

"...can the ones that are corrupt just stop or is it like the old days here in America of Al Capones time you just don't quit and get out...." -- Good point Larry, what happens after the new leadership is in power is the: 'proof in the pudding", I guess... Xi jingping (if as expected, he's the new leader) will determine the outcome, to the extent that he's allowed to--- within the Central Committee

[Randy W]

From the South China Morning Post (and quoted in western media)

 

Bo Xilai's downfall his ‘greedy’ wife’s fault, say relatives

The source added that Gu was likely to testify.

 

A spokesman for the Intermediate People's Court in Jinan refused to confirm the trial date but said it would be announced at least three days in advance.

 

There is a lot of animosity being directed at Gu by Bo's other family members, according to two sources with connections to his family. They said Bo's family believed Gu's bad behaviour and poor judgment had contributed to his downfall.

 

Gu had also introduced some of her acquaintances to Bo, including Wang Lijun. Wang became Bo's right-hand man but ended up triggering his downfall by fleeing to the US consulate in February last year seeking asylum, according to the sources and earlier reports.

 

One of the sources is friends with Bo's younger brother, Bo Xicheng, and sister, Bo Xiaoying, and said both have complained about Gu.

 

"They blamed the disgrace of Bo on his failed marriage with Gu," said the source, who has been close to the Bo family for decades.

 

"They see their brother as an aspiring politician who was seduced by his greedy wife."

 

The person added that Gu had alienated Bo Xilai from his family members.