Man prosecuted for keeping 6 wives

A man accused of being married to six women stood trial in Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Court last week on polygamy charges, local media reported Saturday.

The 47-year-old defendant, an unidentified man from Jiangsu Province, stood accused of carrying on six marriages simultaneously and fathering seven children, the Xinmin Evening News reported.

The defendant's wife in Shanghai, who was also left unidentified, discovered her husband was married to two other women in Beijing when police approached her while investigating him for fraud.

It was then she realized that everything she had known about her husband was a lie, including his education, marital status and career, the report said.

The defendant married her in Shanghai in 2005 after they had dated for two years. After getting married, the defendant kept her in Shanghai, but continued to reside in Beijing, where he claimed he worked as an office manager for a Beijing-based bank, the report said.

During the fraud investigation, the defendant told police that he made up the story about working in a bank. He actually owned a company in Beijing's Haidian district.

The newspaper report did not detail what the company did or how much money he made.

After his wife reported him to police, investigators discovered that he had married three other women before marrying her. His oldest child was 23 years old.

In addition, he went on to marry two other women in Beijing, who together gave birth to three of his children.

The court did not announce a verdict in the case. According to China's criminal law, bigamy and polygamy charges can carry a sentence of up to two years in prison.

The man was able to hide his marriages in part because municipalities and provinces don't have access to all of the local marriage records of other regions, said Wu Ji, a criminal lawyer from the Shanghai Hengye Law Firm.

"That's what made it possible for him to cheat on so many women," Wu told the Global Times.

The Shanghai Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau connected the city's marriage database to its counterparts in nine cities and provinces in June 2012.