Jul 29, 2014

Continue reading the main story BEIJING — Pegasus Communications, a subsidiary of the American public relations firm Edelman, says that its Beijing office was visited last week by the “relevant authorities” and that it was cooperating with an investigation. No details were released about which authorities were involved or the matter being investigated. But political observers in China said that it could be linked to a wider inquiry into corruption at the main state television network and to an investigation of Li Dongsheng , a vice minister at the Ministry of Public Security who was close to Zhou Yongkang, a former domestic security czar now under scrutiny. The investigations are part of a broad anticorruption campaign by President Xi Jinping that analysts say is intended to concentrate more power in Mr. Xi’s hands and to bring discipline to the Communist Party, which has more than 80 million members. Pegasus was founded in 2002 by Rui Chenggang and Cao Gang, who also goes by the name Steven Cao, and was bought in 2007 by Edelman. Mr. Rui, who went on to become a prominent television anchor on China Central Television, the state-owned network, was detained by security officers earlier this month . A Chinese news report published after his detention said that Mr. Rui had a 7.9 percent stake in Pegasus when that company was providing services to his employer, CCTV. Edelman later confirmed that Mr. Rui held those shares. The latest Pegasus statement, dated last Friday, contends that Mr. Cao was cooperating with officials in their investigation of the company. Mr. Cao is a minority shareholder in Pegasus and the head of Edelman’s operations in China. Before taking up his security post, Mr. Li was a deputy head of the Communist Party’s propaganda department and had worked at CCTV. Political observers say that Mr. Rui appears to be implicated in an inquiry into CCTV and its financial channel, CCTV 2, in particular. Mr. Rui’s supervisor, Guo Zhenxi, the head of the second channel, was detained in May, and the channel’s deputy director, Li Yong, was detained on July 11, the same day Mr. Rui was detained. More on nytimes.com