Behind every corrupt man (3)

"My parents-in-law want to have their own business, so I made a trade with a businessman," Pan told the local court.

Pan helped a businessman, who invested a large amount of money in a hotel owned by Pan's father-in-law, become a deputy to the Guangzhou People's Congress, according to the report.

Pan's father-in-law was sentenced to eight years in prison as a price of receiving 500,000 yuan ($80,302) in bribes.

"Maybe Pan shouldn't blame all on his family, although I'm sure a vain woman could be a femme fatale," an official surnamed Fang from the prosecutor's office in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, told the Global Times, adding that many wives even push their official husbands to splurge money on fancy cars, villas and luxury bags.

Fang said that families contribute to corruption in other ways, such as covering up bribes. He cited the example of another official, Zhang Guohua, former deputy director of the Department of Land and Resources in Northwest China's Gansu Province.

Zhang traded government projects with contractors who bribed him and then transferred the money to his wife's bank account to cover it up. Five months after Zhang was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2012, his wife was also sentenced to three years in prison for receiving bribes in various forms.