BEIJING - THE anti-graft authorities in a southern Chinese city are questioning mistresses of suspected corrupt officials and finding the information is paying off, state media said yesterday.

'At least 80 per cent of corrupt officials exposed in Dongguan had mistresses who gave us important information that we did not possess,' Mr Zhou Yuefeng, deputy director of the industrial city's anti-graft bureau, told the China Daily. He declined to give details.

Under regulations that came into effect a year ago, China's civil servants would be automatically dismissed from their posts if they have a mistress.

China's top prosecutor's office last year said that among 16 provincial-level officials punished for serious graft in the previous five years, most were involved in 'trading power for sex', gambling, money-laundering and shady land sales to developers. Nearly 90 per cent of them kept mistresses, it was reported.

REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS