girls that were at least 5 ft 6 inches tall and have a highschool diploma at a salary of US$1000 a month. The girls were offered as sex mistresses and prostitutes to government officials. Lai has his own Forbidden City replica () built with US$20 million that acts as a film production studio. He typically drove sedans. His armoured Mercedes was formerly owned by Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin. Relationships with officials and celebrities Lai is known to be financially linked with high-ranking Chinese officials and celebrities. Some of the people include Ji Shengde, major general of military intelligence for the People's Liberation Army. Ji Shengde is the son of former Secretary General of the State Council Ji Pengfei. Singer Dong Wenhua was offered 10 million yuan if she took her clothes off for Lai, who was drunk at the time. She did take off her clothes for the money, and disappeared from public view. She returned to state-run television after 3 years. Others include Li Jizhou (), deputy minister for public security and Xu Ganlu (), Immigration secretary. Other corrupt officials include Liu Feng (), Zhuang Rushun (), Lan Fu (), Yang Qianxian (), Shi Zhaobin (), Zhao Keming (). Some of them have already received sentences. Lai's corruption of what was said to be literally hundreds of Chinese officials was effected through paying millions of dollars in bribes, by hosting lavish banquets and by giving jobs to relatives of local bureaucrats. He also blackmailed officials, through filming them with prostitutes arranged by him. Such arrangements enabled his companies to receive illicit import licenses and to avoid billions of dollars in import taxes. Lai's level of corruption of officials was to such a degree that corrupted naval officers allegedly ordered naval ships to escort freighters carrying Lai's contraband. Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, known for his anti-corruption stand and for repeatedly saying publicly that Lai needs to be executed, actually met Lai twice. In one meeting an offer was made for Lai to pay US$125 million in exchange for amnesty. This suggested the entire government knew of Lai's corruption for a long time. Lai also gave money to Zhu Niuniu, son of former deputy commander of China's 31st army from Xiamen. Zhu constantly threatened to expose Lai's smuggling if he did not help him with his financial problem from gambling at the Macau casinos. Lai himself was an apprentice to