Investigative team headed to Shandong to investigate sex assault case

The Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security said on Monday they have dispatched a joint team to East China's Shandong province to supervise the investigation of a high-profile case in which a former executive is suspected of sexually assaulting his "adopted" teenage daughter.

The case triggered nationwide attention and anger last week after Chinese media reported a man, surnamed Bao, is suspected of sexually assaulting his "adopted" teenage daughter in about 2016 when she was 14 years old. Bao has been removed from his positions as senior official with two companies.

The woman also said she has been calling police in Shandong since last year, but the case was withdrawn after it was first filed in April 2019, according to a report by South Reviews, a Guangdong-based magazine, on Sunday.

But Bao, who served as a vice-president in charge of legal affairs at Yangtai-based Jereh Oilfield Services Group and an independent non-executive director of ZTE Corporation, denied the adoption relationship and said the woman falsified the facts, the report said.

On Thursday night, the Zhifu branch of the Yantai Public Security Bureau in Shandong posted a statement on Sina Weibo, saying they received a woman's report on April 8, 2019, in which she said she had been sexually abused several times by Bao over the previous three years.

"We filed the case the next day and asked prosecutors to help investigate," the branch said in the statement. "But after the investigation, we didn't think the evidence was enough to prove Bao committed a crime, so we withdrew the case on April 26 last year."

"We decided to reopen on Oct 9, 2019 after the woman and her lawyer provided new clues and we also had conducted lots of research on the case," it said, adding the investigation related to the second case filing is still ongoing and evidence is being collected.

Meanwhile, Jereh Oilfield Service Group fired Bao, while Bao resigned from ZTE Corporation.

On Saturday, the public security bureau in Yantai also posted a statement, clarifying it has established a special work team to thoroughly inspect how the Zhifu branch handled the case at its early stage and respond to hot issues questions from the public.

According to public information and ZTE's 2018 annual report, Bao, who was born in 1972, worked as a lawyer, partner and senior legal adviser in Beijing and Tianjin, and in New York and California for a couple of years.