Bo Xilai | featured news

A BRITISH businessman whose murder triggered China's biggest political scandal in decades had been informing MI6 of the private affairs of one of the most powerful families in the Communist Party in the last year of his life.

The murder of the British businessman, Neil Heywood, is still seen as stemming from a financial dispute, but the intelligence links add an enticing subplot to his death.

China is set to promote two rising stars and possible future national leaders at a Communist Party congress opening next week, one taking the old job of disgraced former high-flyer Bo Xilai in the country's biggest metropolis, sources said.

China's communist leadership expelled Bo Xilai from the ruling party Friday and sought to bury him with charges ranging from corruption to sexual affairs, aiming to sweep away their most damaging scandal in decades while finally scheduling their long-awaited leadership transition for November.

Former Mafia-busting police chief Wang Lijun faces 15 years behind bars after the second major criminal case in China's biggest political scandal in years concluded today. But the guilty verdict left the public and analysts guessing if the scandal's central figure, disgraced former leader Bo Xilai, will himself face trial.

A former police chief at the center of a major China political scandal admitted attempting to defect to the United States, and did not contest charges of bribery and illegal surveillance at his trial on Tuesday, a court official said.

The Chinese government has charged Wang Lijun, a former provincial police chief who became embroiled in China’s biggest political scandal in decades, with taking bribes, defecting and abusing his power, the official Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday.

Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Communist Party official Bo Xilai, was found guilty and given a suspended death sentence on Monday for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, according to the Associated Press.

The one-day murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai, concluded with prosecutors telling the court that she slipped poison into a glass of water to kill British businessman Neil Heywood after he got drunk. Gu killed Heywood, they argued, because he threatened the security of her Harvard University son.

The son of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai says he is confident the "facts will speak for themselves" when his mother stands trial for murder Thursday in the country's most sensational political scandal in decades.