HONG KONG - The Edison Chen photo scandal is said to have started because the actor's businessman father was in debt, reported Sudden Weekly tabloid.

The report said that after Chen, 27, took his laptop to be serviced in 2006, risque pictures that he allegedly took of women including Twins singer Gillian Chung and actress Cecilia Cheung had been passed around by insiders in the computer industry.

But the photos did not become publicly available until they fell into the hands of his father's creditors and were leaked onto the Net, the report said.

Reports said gangsters are supposedly planning to teach Chen a lesson or kill him over the scandal.

His travel plans have been shrouded in secrecy, but Sudden Weekly said he may fly first to Japan, where he would board a Hong Kong-bound private plane owned by Media Asia studio head Peter Lam.

Mr Lam, who is also the owner of Chen's management company, said it was up to the actor to decide whether to quit showbiz after the scandal.

He described Chen as a '26-year-old kid' and urged the public to give him a chance to explain what had happened and let him 'get back on his feet again'.

For the others involved in the photo scandal, the fall-out continues.

Cheung's father-in-law, actor Patrick Tse, has denied the latest round of rumours that she has been kicked out of the Tse family.

Chung, who apologised on Monday, will make her first TV appearance since the scandal on a charity show tomorrow. But a Twins concert scheduled for April has been postponed to September.