Prostitution ring scandal hits Hilton hotel chain in China
THE Hilton Hotel chain was hit by scandal in China today as a branch was shut down by police investigating a prostitution ring.
Police in southwest China's Chongqing municipality closed the local Hilton Hotel and arrested 22 people suspected of running a prostitution ring, state press reported.
Chongqing police were investigating the owner of the property, Qinglong Property Development Co, and its alleged links to an underworld gang running a prostitution ring at the hotel, China National Radio said.
The hotel was shut down for business today and customers were seen leaving with their luggage.

The hotel's reception desk confirmed the establishment had been closed, but refused to comment on the investigation.
"We are closing down due to unforeseen trouble, we will reopen on July 6," a receptionist said.
According to the news report, police interrogated many of the hotel staff, detaining 102 suspects, of which 22 have been formally arrested.
The gang was also suspected of dealing illegal drugs, it added.
The Hilton International Hotel Group manages the business in a joint venture with the property company, the report said.
Police in Chongqing, a municipality of over 30 million people, were engaged in a wide-ranging mafia crackdown that resulted in a death penalty being meted out to the city's former top judicial official in April.
The verdict against Wen Qiang, once also a former deputy police chief, brought to a climax a series of trials that lifted the lid on the seamy underworld in the city.
Link here:
http://www.news.com.au/breaking- ... rfku0-1225882481838

This is odd. It could be a personal vendetta between the owner and the authorities. The Hilton management will never allow this to go on in a property they manage. Besides, there a lots of KTVs and Saunas the Police could go after, why the Hilton?

Perhaps Paris was in town?

Wow. China feels like such a secretive society... and ok its an on going investigation but even the police dont leak that much information to the public as to what exactly goes on with detailed press statements.

there is a ktv or sauna in almost all of the better hotels in china.  i wonder what more the hilton offered. probably just a vendetta or is china becoming more strict?

Without further information we can only speculate as to the reasons behind the closure, but I can't see anything like this happening without the party's blessing.

Was Wen Jiang one of Jiang Zemin's people? Could be part of the continuing process of Hu Jintao's people displacing the old order?

I think the party would regards the drugs as a greater threat to order than the prostitution. Perhaps the prostitution bust was easier to sell to the press than admitting that there's a drug problem.

As mentioned in my earlier post, the closure is political and is a result of some personal vendetta. This is from today's SCMP (23rd June):

"Management of the Hilton Chongqing sought to distance themselves yesterday from a nightclub that has been linked to prostitution and that led to the hotel being shut by police on Saturday.

Hotel spokeswoman Doris Tan said: "We are totally in the dark about the identity of the 22 suspects arrested in relation to the nightclub.

"That's why we are not able to make any comment about the police action. One thing that should be made clear is that the nightclub involved in the police operation is totally independent from the hotel."

She said the 500-room hotel, which opened eight years ago, had complied with mainland laws and regulations and had a co-operative relationship with the municipal government. Tan said she was told it would reopen on July 5. Police in the southwestern municipality arrested the suspects on Saturday night on suspicion of running a prostitution ring in the hotel's Diamond Dynasty nightclub, the Guangzhou-based 21st Century Business Herald reported yesterday.

It was unclear if any Hilton International Hotel Group staff were implicated in the crackdown. Hilton manages the hotel, which is owned by property mogul Peng Zhimin .

On the mainland, the shutting down or temporary closure of an entertainment establishment usually spells trouble for its boss or the downfall of powerful political figures protecting it. In the Diamond Dynasty's case, the 21st Century Business Herald reported, the police targeted investors in the hotel rather than the operators of the nightclub.

Peng, 47, is the boss of Qinglong Property Development, which owns 53 per cent of the Hilton Chongqing. The report said he kept a low profile, seldom giving interviews to the media.

However, Singapore-based newspaper Lianhe Zaobao reported widespread speculation that Peng was close to Wang Hongju , the former Chongqing mayor who stepped down in late November.

Wang paid a high-profile visit to one of Peng's property projects in January last year, with Qinglong's official website still featuring reports and photographs of the visit.

On the mainland, visits by a political figure usually imply support for their host, who could be an entrepreneur or one of their subordinates.

The closure of the Chongqing nightclub follows a crackdown on bars and nightclubs in Beijing and is also the latest chapter in a sweeping campaign targeting Chongqing's crime syndicates.

The 21st Century Business Herald report said local police officers had provided "a protective umbrella" for the illegal operation of Diamond Dynasty, which allegedly provided prostitution and sex services for its customers.

Citing officials with the Chongqing Municipal Public Security Bureau, it reported that local police had investigated problems at the hotel twice since November, but those in charge at the hotel simply refused to make any concessions.

The report quoted a person familiar with the property sector in the city as saying: "We've no idea how the case will end and who will be implicated. Is this a new round in the crackdown on the underworld or another campaign aimed at the property sector?"

China ploughs on with a hopeless campaign to clean up prostitution
 
By Tim Collard World Last updated: June 23rd, 2010
The world’s second oldest profession is, it seems, trying to suppress prostitution. The Chinese have been practising it for some time, with the predictable degree of success. Now we hear that the Hilton hotel chain has got into some embarrassment because police in Chongqing claim to have discovered a brothel, masquerading as a karaoke club, in the basement of the Chongqing Hilton (Malcolm Moore reported on this Monday). Well, when I say “claim”, I am of course being British and over-cautious: I don’t necessarily believe everything the Chinese authorities tell me, but I am fairly sure that if they say they’ve found a brothel, a brothel is what they have found. The combination of human nature and huge inequalities is always going to produce certain phenomena, with a proliferation of knocking-shops high on the list.
Hilton Worldwide are claiming complete innocence. They are of course quite correct to do so, explaining that the karaoke club is an entirely separate business that happens to operate in the same complex. I am not knocking Hilton service, but I have never found it to be quite that inclusive. But everyone knows what goes on in hotel night-clubs in China (we hear that, last month, police raided the Passion Club under the Great Wall Sheraton hotel in Beijing, reportedly arresting 118 girls).
I suppose these occasional fits of heavy-handed morality, like the recurrent fits of hyper-nationalism, are the Communist Party’s way of getting people to click their heels and stand to attention every now and then, given that ideological crackdowns on revisionists or capitalist roaders aren’t really feasible any more. All the same, it seems odd that a major international event like the Shanghai Expo 2010 is accompanied by the closure of all the places which visitors might have wanted to visit out of hours. They’re a funny lot, the Chinese. They’ve done a fair bit of adapting to the way the world wags in the last 30 years; how long before they finally realise that crackdowns on the low life will prove about as watertight and free of adverse unintended consequences as, well, the Three Gorges Dam?
Link here:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/new ... an-up-prostitution/