Websites fined for 'defaming' Sinopec executive

Two websites that spread rumors about a female executive with the State-owned China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) being involved in a sex scandal were ordered to apologize and pay 45,000 yuan ($7,389) in compensation to the victim, according to the verdict from a court in Beijing on Wednesday.

The verdict said the two websites, IT Business News (itxinwen.com) and news portal china.com, should be held accountable in the libel case, and said they should publish an apology on their homepages and nationally circulated newspapers, and pay the victim 30,000 yuan and 15,000 yuan, respectively, in compensation.

In January, the posts with pictures appeared on the two websites containing information regarding a Sinopec female executive trapped in a scandal with African sex workers in 2012. The posts went viral online.

In August, the original poster, Fu Xuesheng, was arrested on criminal charges for fabricating the rumor that Zhang Qin, a Sinopec female executive, accepted the services of two male African sex workers. Fu had been taking revenge on Zhang after he failed in a business bid for a project with Sinopec in Wuhan, Hubei province, the court said.

Zhang sued the two websites for an apology and a total compensation of 100,000 yuan.

The court held two trials on the case in September.

The court explained Wednesday that itxinwen.com did not label its article as reposted and endorsed the article with their own editor's name, therefore, the court did not accept the claim that it had only been reposted.

On china.com, the content was on an electronic bulletin board, and the publisher was a Net user, and the website only provided the Internet services. However, the court said the website did not delete the content quickly enough after it received the notice from the victim.

Wang Sixin, a professor from the School of Politics and Law at Communication University of China, told the Global Times that the court issued its verdict based on evidence. "Websites are responsible for supervising the content during the transmission."